ters at work fitting it up. On Friday he ordered a new and complete outfit of machinery from Boston; on Saturday the machinery arrived and the men set it up; on Monday work was started, and on Tuesday the manufacturer was filling his orders to the full number of 2400 pairs a day.

There are very many people in the world who still prefer the hand-made shoe, and there is nothing to prevent the world generally from going back to that system if they choose; but St. Crispin's gentle art has blossomed into a vaster field of blessings for mankind under the fruitful impetus of invention than if left to vegetate under the simple processes of primitive man.

Horses, no less than man, have shared in the improvement in leather manufacture. The harnesses of the farmer's and labouring man's horses a century ago, when they were fortunate enough to own horses, were of the crudest description. Ropes, cords, coarse bands of leather were the common provisions. Now the strength and cheapness of harnesses enable the poor man to equip his horse with a working suit impossible to have been produced a hundred years ago.

To the beautiful effects produced by the use of modern embossing machines on paper and wood have been added many charming patterns in embossed leather. Books and leather cases, saddlery and household ornamentation of various descriptions have been either moulded into forms of beauty, or stamped or rolled by cameo and intaglio designs cut into the surface of fast-moving cylinders.

The leather manufactures have become so vastly important and valuable in some countries, especially in the United States-second, almost to agricultural

products that it would be very interesting to extend the description to many processes and machines, and to facts displaying the enormous traffic in leather, now necessarily omitted for want of space.

CHAPTER XXIV.

MINERALS-WELLS.

Dost thou hear the hammer of Thor,
Wielded in his gloves of iron?

As with leather, so with stone, the hand tools and hard labour have not changed in principle since the ancient days. The hammer for breaking, the lever for lifting, the saw for cutting, rubbing-stones and irons for smoothing and polishing, sand and water for the same purpose, the mallet and chisel, and other implements for ornamenting, the square, the level, and the plumb for their respective purposes, all are as old as the art of building.

And as for buildings and sculpture of stone and marble made by hand tools, we have yet to excel the pyramids, the Parthenon of Athens, which "Earth proudly wears as the best gem upon her zone," the palaces, coliseums, and aqueducts of Rome, the grand and polished tombs of India, the exquisite halls of the Alhambra, and the Gothic cathedrals.

But the time came when human blood and toil became too dear to be the possession solely of the rulers and the wealthy, and to be used alone to perpetuate and commemorate riches, power and glory.

Close on the expansion of men's minds came the expansion of steam and the development of modern inventions. The first application of the steam engine in fields of human labour was the drawing of

water from the coal mines of England; then in drawing the coal itself.

It was only a step for the steam engine into a new field of labour when General Bentham introduced his system of wood-sawing machinery in 1800; and from sawing wood to sawing stone was only one more step. We find that taken in 1803 in Pennsylvania, when Oliver Evans of Philadelphia drove with a highpressure steam engine, "twelve saws in heavy frames, sawing at the rate of one hundred feet of marble in twelve hours." How long would it have taken hand sawyers of marble at ancient Paros and Naxos to have done the same?

Stone-cutting machines of other forms than sawing then followed.

It was desired to divide large blocks generally at the quarries to facilitate transportation. Machines for this purpose are called stone-channelling machines. They consist of a gang of chisels bound together and set on a framework which travels on a track adjacent to the stone to be cut, and so arranged that the cutters may be set to the stone at desired angles, moved automatically forward and back in the grooves they are cutting, be fed in or out, raised or lowered, detached, and otherwise manipulated in the operation.

Other stone-cutting machines had for their objects the cutting and moulding the edges of tables, mantels and slabs; and the cutting of circular and other curved work. In the later style of machine the cutter fixed on the end of a spindle is guided in the desired directions on the surface of the stone by a pointer, which, attached to the cutter spindle, moves in the grooves of a pattern also connected to the rotating support carrying the cutter.

Other forms of most ingenious stone-dressing and

carving machines have been devised for cutting mouldings, and ornamental figures and devices, in accordance with a model or pattern fixed to the under side of the table which carries the stone or marble to be dressed; and in which, by means of a guide moving in the pattern, the diamond cutter or cutters, carried in a circular frame above the work and adjusted to its surface, are moved in the varying directions determined by the pattern. A stream of water is directed on the stone to clear it of the dust during the operations. The carving of stone by machinery is now a sister branch of wood carving. Monuments, ornamentation, and intricate forms of figures and characters are wrought with great accuracy by cutting and dressing tools guided by the patterns, or directed by the hand of the operator.

For the dressing of the faces of grindstones, special forms of cutting machines have been devised. It was slow and tedious task to drill holes through stone by hand tools; and it was indeed a revolution in this branch of the art when steam engines were employed to rotate a rod armed at its end with diamond or other cutters against the hardest stone. This mode of drilling also effected a revolution in the art of blasting. Then, neither height, nor depth, nor thickness of the stone could prevent the progress of the drill rod. Tunnels through mountain walls, and wells through solid quartz are cut to the depth of thousands of feet.

One instance is related of the wonderful efficiency on a smaller scale of such a machine: The immense columns of the State Capitol at Columbus, Ohio, were considered too heavy for the foundation on which they rested. The American Diamond Rock Boring Company of Providence, Rhode Island, bored