Though watches, and especially the cheap ones, are a good deal turned out on the American "interchangeable" system, by which every part is produced wholesale on exactly the same scale, thus making it very easy to replace any portion of the watch, we have as yet no large watch factories, such as exist at Waltham, in Massachusetts, where they are made in thousands by machinery.

Although it is difficult under what head to classify them, we ought not to omit guns and fire-arms generally, which form one of the most special trades of Birmingham, just as it does of Liége, in Belgium. A gun, in its manufacture, used to employ upwards of fifty different sets of hands, each of which was occupied in a particular item of the gun, and no other, such as the maker of the barrel, the lock, the sight, the stock, the trigger, etc.; but now-a-days this has been greatly reduced by the interchangeable system, as in the case of watches, and the fire-arm trade is undergoing many changes on this account. Nine-tenths of the gun and rifle manufacture is carried on at Birmingham, though there is a large Government gun factory at Enfield, near London. Gunpowder is made under very different conditions, far away from the bustle and noise of large towns. The production of gunpowder is attended with so much risk to life, that we always find powder works situated in some quiet, remote place on the banks of a stream, so that when an explosion does happen, it may do as little damage as possible. Our principal gunpowder works are near Hounslow and Waltham Abbey in Middlesex, near Dartford and Tunbridge in Kent, at Chilworth near Guildford in Surrey; and also at Elterwater, in the

Lake district; and there are manufactories of gun cotton at Stowmarket in Suffolk, and Faversham in Kent, which are almost as dangerous as those of gunpowder, if anything goes wrong.

Percussion-caps and cartridges form another considerable branch of the fire-arm trade, which, though sufficiently dangerous, is carried on under such strict regulations as to make the risk as small as possible. One of the largest percussion-cap factories is in London, in the Gray's-Inn Road, but the majority are in the outskirts of Birmingham and Wolverhampton, while caps for the use of our army are mainly produced at the Arsenal in Woolwich. Connected with this subject of warfare are those gigantic establishments, which are known throughout the globe for their monster productions in the shape of cannon and armour-plate. The largest guns ever made come from the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich ; but an equal reputation attaches to Sir William Armstrong's vast works at Elswick near Newcastle, where the great guns that bear his name are produced. Sheffield is the head-quarters of the manufacture of armour-plate, which is rolled of enormous thickness, and is, unfortunately, a branch of trade which, like that of cannon, does not seem destined to die out for a considerable time.

If there is one branch of manufacture more than another that England excels in over all the world, it is that of machinery, whatever may be the kind. Agricultural machinery has of late years developed into a gigantic industry, employing between 20,000 and 30,000 hands and a vast amount of capital. There are few towns now of any importance which do not

possess some agricultural implement works, some of which, such as Fowler's at Leeds, Howard's at Bedford, and Ransome and Sims' at Ipswich, rank amongst the first establishments of the kind in the world. The situation of most of these agricultural works is not so much affected by the vicinity of the iron districts, as their having a large agricultural neighbourhood to fall back upon for customers, so that we find towns like Lincoln, Grantham, Shrewsbury, Gainsborough and Beverley becoming centres of engineering industry. Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Newcastle, Crewe and Glasgow are the chief localities where those vast engineering works are situated which have given England such a name on the Continent for all kinds of works, whether it be a locomotive, such as is turned out at the London and North Western Railway depôt at Crewe, at the rate of one a day, or a huge iron girder bridge, such as the one that spans the Menai Straits, or whether it be the machinery for a cotton mill, such as is produced at Messrs. Platt's large establishment at Oldham, a sugar mill to go out to the West Indies, or a complete dock for the Cape of Good Hope. It is impossible, amidst our innumerable engineering establishments, to do more than allude to some of those well-known names, which have a reputation in foreign countries as great as they have in their own.

BUILDING STONES, GLASS, AND POTTERY.

ALTHOUGH the rocks and strata that compose our hills and valleys are chiefly valuable for the mineral treasures that they contain, they have also a value of a different kind in the building stones, sands, clays, and other materials which we extract from them, and apply to so many useful arts and sciences. Were it not for our great variety of building stones, we should not be able to show such splendid specimens of the architect's and builder's skill as are to be seen scattered over England and in our great cities, nor should we be able to indulge in substantial and well built houses, but have to fall back upon timber and other less durable substances. Granite is usually considered the noblest and best of our building stones, and especially where great massiveness is required, or great resisting power. It was once considered to be one of the oldest rocks geologically, but it is now known to be of different ages, and indeed may occur in the geological strata of almost any age. In the South of England, Devon and Cornwall abound with granite of a very fine kind, which has been employed in the building of London, Waterloo and Westminster Bridges, the Thames Embankment, the Portland Breakwater, etc. The greater part of the wild hills of Dartmoor is composed of this granite, the principal quarries being at Hingston Down, Tremator near Tavistock, and in Cornwall, near Liskeard, Penryn near Falmouth, Penzance and Madron. Looe and

Falmouth are the chief granite shipping ports. Granite quarries are also found in a small isolated patch at Mountsorel in Leicestershire, in the Isle of Anglesea, near Holyhead, and to a considerable extent in parts of Cumberland. Scotland is a great source of some of our best granites, which are very abundant in Aberdeenshire (shipped at Aberdeen and Peterhead), in the islands of Mull and Arran, and in Kirkcudbrightshire. The Mull granite is particularly beautiful, and of a delicate pink colour. Ireland, too, abounds in excellent granite in the mountains of Wicklow, Donegal, Galway and Down; so that with such plentiful supplies, we are not likely to run short of this valuable building stone. Granite, however, is not the hardest stone that England possesses, for there are certain rocks of volcanic or igneous origin, known as greenstones or basalts, which are so very intractable as to be almost useless for building purposes, though this very quality makes them valuable for road paving and "metalling." The principal supplies of these come from Penmaenmawr in Carnarvonshire, the Clee Hills near Ludlow (Shropshire), and Bardon Hill in Leicestershire. Slates, one of the most necessary of our building materials, are quarried from the oldest geological rocks (mostly of Lower Silurian or Cambrian date), and are principally found on the north coast of Cornwall at Delabole and Tintagel, and in North Wales, where are the celebrated slate quarries of Llanberis and Bethesda near Bangor, and Festiniog in Merionethshire. The former are shipped at Bangor, and the latter at Portmadoc, to which place a very curious railway brings the slates down from the moun