by a peculiar swing that he gives it round his head, makes it perfectly circular, at the same time that it is so hardened as to be easily snapped from the rod. it on a forked iron to the annealing cooled gradually.

Lastly, the boy takes furnace, where it is

All these operations require the greatest nicety in the workmen; and would take a long time in the performance, and not be very neatly done after all, if they were all done by one man. But the quickness with which they are done by the division of labor is perfectly wonderful.

The cheapness of glass for common use, which cheapness is produced by chemical knowledge and the division of labor, has set the ingenuity of man to work to give greater beauty to glass as an article of luxury. The employment of sharp-grinding wheels, put in motion by a treadle, and used in conjunction with a very nice hand, produces cut glass. Cut glass is now comparatively so cheap, that scarcely a family of the middle ranks is without some beautiful article of this manufacture.

Ordinary drinking-glasses, lamps, etc., are made in imitation of cut glass, by subjecting a portion of the melted glass to pressure in a mold. Articles of great beauty, but of a less cost, closely resembling cut glass, are made in this manner.

The reduction of the cost of the manufacture of glass has had the effect of improving the architecture of our houses to a very great degree. We have now plate-glass of the largest dimensions, giving light and beauty to our shops; and sheet-glass, nearly as effective as plate, adorning our private dwellings. Sheet-glass, in the making of which an amount of ingenuity is exercised which would have been thought impossible in the early stages of glass-making, is doing for the ordinary purposes of building what plate-glass did formerly for the rich. A portion of melted glass, weighing twelve or fourteen pounds, is, by the exercise of this

skill, converted into a ball, and then into a cylinder, and then into a flat plate; and thus two crystal palaces have been built in England, which have consumed as much glass, weight by weight, as was required for all the houses in one fourth of the area of Great Britain in the beginning of the century.

"Thus the use of glass in our windows, instead of the shutters of our ancestors, has introduced comfort into the meanest dwelling, which did not formerly belong to the richest palace. By means of this contrivance, the light is filtered from the wind, the rain, and the cold; we can enjoy the one without being inconvenienced by the others; and we can, in conjunction with our method of warming, create an in-door climate adapted to our feelings and desires. The use of glass in many of our domestic articles of furniture and vessels, contributes to cleanliness and health, for the slightest soil upon our glasses and decanters is revealed by this most transparent material, and the purity of water and other liquids contained in them, is physically tested by the same means. Even the mirror which adorns our rooms, reminds us of the necessary attention to personal appearance, which self-respect, as well as respect for society demands. By means of glass the eye of advancing age regains something of its youthful vigor. By means of glass the astronomer makes us acquainted with distant worlds, and the microscopist with the inhabitants of a drop of water. By means of glass the physicist has discovered the physical properties of the atmosphere, and the chemist its equally wonderful chemical properties. Indeed, science is greatly indebted for its progress to the convenient chambers of glass of every variety of shape and form, so easily and so cheaply procured, within whose transparent walls processes can be isolated and watched without danger to the operator. The whole of pneumatic chemistry depends on glass; as does

also the existence of most chemical acids and mineral reagents, which could never have been discovered, or if discovered, preserved for any length of time, but for glass retorts and glass bottles."

There are two kinds of pottery-common potters' ware and porcelain. The first is a pure kind of brick, and the second a mixture of very fine brick and glass. Almost all nations have some knowledge of pottery; and those of the very hot countries are sometimes satisfied with dishes formed by their fingers without any tool, and dried by the heat of the sun. In all countries, however, good pottery must be baked or burned in a kiln of some kind or other.

Vessels for holding meat and drink are almost as indispensable as the meat and drink themselves; and the two qualities in them that are most valuable are, that they shall be cheap and easily cleaned: Pottery, as it is now produced, possesses both of these qualities in the very highest degree. A white basin, having all the useful properties of the most costly vessels, may be purchased for a few cents in any vil lage in the United States. There are very few substances used in human food that have any effect upon these vessels; and it only requires rinsing them in hot water, and wiping them with a cloth, and they are clean.

The making of an earthen bowl would be to a man who made a first attempt no easy matter. Let us see how it is done so that it can be carried to remote districts and sold for a few cents, and yet leave a profit to the maker and the wholesale and retail dealer.

The cheapest varieties of pottery, such as flower-pots, etc., are made of common clay, similar to that of which bricks are formed, and which, from the iron it contains, usually turns red in burning. Next to this is the common crockery ware, formed of the purer and whiter clays, in which iron only exists in minute quantities. Porcelain, which is the

most expensive and beautiful of all the varieties of pottery, is formed only from the purest and most delicate clays, united with finely powdered flint; this last melting with the clay, when the two are exposed to intense heat, vitrifies and gives to the mass a semi-transparent appearance.

In the manufacture of porcelain, the clay is worked in water by various machinery till it contains no single piece large enough to be visible to the eye. It is like cream in consistence. The flints are burned. They are first ground in a mill, and then worked in water in the same manner as the clay, the large pieces being returned a second time to the mill.

When both are fine enough, one part of flint is mixed with five or six of clay; the whole is worked to a paste; after which it is kneaded either by the hands or a machine; and when the kneading is completed, it is ready for the potter.

He has a little wheel which lies horizontally. He lays a portion of clay on the center of the wheel, puts one hand, or finger if the vessel is to be a small one, in the middle, and his other hand on the outside, and, as the wheel turns rapidly round, draws up a hollow vessel in an instant. With his hands, or with very simple tools, he brings it to the shape he wishes, cuts it from the wheel with a wire, and a boy carries it off. The potter makes vessel after vessel, as fast as they can be carried away.

The potter's wheel is an instrument of the highest antiquity. In the book of Ecclesiasticus we read-"So doth the potter, sitting at his work, and turning the wheel about with his feet, who is always carefully set at his work, and maketh all his work by number: he fashioneth the clay with his arm, and boweth down his strength before his feet; he applieth himself to lead it over, and is diligent to make clean the furnace."-(c. xxxix. v. 29, 30.) At the

present day the oriental potter stands in a pit, in which the lower machinery of his wheel is placed. He works as the potter of the ancient Hebrews.

POTTER'S WHEEL OF MODERN EGYPT.

As the potter produces the vessels they are partially dried, after which they are turned on a lathe and smoothed with a wet sponge when necessary. Only round vessels can be made on the wheel; those of other shapes are made