Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive c10.15840

c10.15840

**WOOTZ**, s. This is an odd name which has attached itself in books to the so-called ‘natural steel’ of S. India, made especially in Salem, and in some parts of Mysore. It is prepared from small bits of malleable iron (made from magnetic ore) which are packed in crucibles with pieces of a particular wood (*Cassia auriculata*), and covered with leaves and clay. The word first appears in a paper read before the Royal Society, June 11, 1795, called: “Experiments and observations to investigate the nature of a kind of Steel, manufactured at Bombay, and there called **Wootz** . . . by George Pearson, M.D.” This paper is quoted below.