The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1865-06-09
The Work of Different Countries.

An English journal of late date has the
following:
"Industry has many curious local at
tachments, and cliDgs with feline fond
ness to particular spots. Thus, watches
are made cheaply in Switzerland, where
the men and women of fifty villages to-
gether arc all busy on toothed wheels,
mainspriugs and jeweled holes. Soap
and cheap perfumes, nasty as we'll as
cheap, are best compounded in Central
Germany. The Tyrol and the Black For
est have three resources for the long win
ter evenings, when the soil is frozen stiff,
and the snow is heavy on the pine boughs
CLOCKS, straw hats and toys. All over
Middle Europe you see the Black Forest
clocks, made by the peasants round the
cottage hearth, as plentiful as Mr.. Samuel
Sticks lacquered time-pieces in Canada.
Baden completes with Italy in straw plait-
ing; while for toys, old Deutschland bears
the bell.
at is a curious thing that the toys
which English children love SO dearly,
and which they break, maltreat, and de-
molish SO vivaciously, should all be for
eign. Here and there, perhaps, rock
ing.horse, or straight-legged spotted
steed with his harness nailed to his body,
nay be the work of an English artisan,
but not often.
"The wooden beasts and birds in the
geological Collections, the puzzles, the
tricks, the gaudily dressed Turks and hus-
sars, squeaking lambs and croaking cards,
come from Germany; go do marbles, Dutch
dolls and lighthouses. Paris gives us the
superb waxen doll, in her satin and
spangles. America sends over the gutta
percha uglinesses and olock-work mice.
"Quite two-thirds of the overshoes that
keep our feet from wet bear the French
or American eagle boastfully embossed
upon their soles. On the other hand,
England sells India rubber tubing, water
proof cloth, and gutta- percha in fifty forms
to Continental nations. The French buy
more of our brandy than we do of theirs
an exchange of which we wish them
Joy; while our silks continue the cheap
est, and theirs the richest and most taste
full; in all that relates to calico they own
our merit; they prefer our broadcloth to
their own, but declare, and justly, the su-
periority of their scarlet-dyed woollens to
ours. AS for boots, they are cut out by
millions of pairs in France, sent to Eng.
land to be closed, returned for the opera
tion Of 'cliching,' and re.exported as of
pure Paris make.
"The Americans have great aptitude
for the manufacture of small, delicate
labor-saving machines. 1t has always been
an object with them to get through their
work with as few hands as possible, and
we owe to them all manner of dainty de-
vices for economizing manual power
London is full of elegant little complica-
tons Of steel rods, no bigger than wine
bottle, devised for stitching all stitchable
materials, for punching, drilling and cut
ting, for metallurgy and agriculture
Our own machinery is commonly of a
gaand and solid haracter-great massive
engines that are to be found at work all
over the world, pumping water out of
mines in the Andes, lashing the waves of
far-off oceans into foam, crushing quartz
in Victoria, and dragging burdens in Bra
zil.
owe cannot, perhaps, quite beat Prague
in turning out stained glass and colored SER
vices glowing with the deep pure tints of
enormous rubies, emeralds and topazcs !;
nor are our tubes and alembics SO fit to 20
through fire as the Bohemian. The old
ware of China the old Japanese jars, the
finest French and German porcelain have
q fragile beauty beyond our imitation
But our potteries only need the open Sc
same' Of free trade to set their good and
cheap products-plates that can bear heat,
glass fairly cut into sharp facets, and
vases modelled on choice shapes from
Greece and Etruria-on every middle.
class table abroad. French housewives
who store away their preserves in jars
coated with poisonous white lead, and dare
not heat the plates lest they should fly in
fragments, and whose clumsy coffee cups
are an inch thick, are not slow to appre-
ciate the merits of Mr.. Gladstone's treaty
of commerce."