106 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



ers, back to back, and stopping to display them at positions favorable for 

 effecting a sale. Both in London and in the country towns and villages, they 

 are sold by the furniture-brokers in large numbers, and, like the paintings on 

 glass, they too are exported not to Catholic countries, where they would be 

 a drug, but to the colonies, and especially to the emancipated negroes of the 

 "West Indies, who have a prodigious appetite for violent colors and gilding." 



i 

 PORPHYRITIC SARCOPHAGUS FOR THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 



A huge sarcophagus, shaped from a block of porphyry, for the reception of 

 the remains of the Duke of Wellington, has been constructing during the past 

 year in Cornwall, by the orders of the British Government. It is thus de- 

 scribed by the London A thenceum: "This enormous stone weighing seventy 

 tons when it was originally detached, and wrought on the spot where it was 

 formed is of a grain so impenetrable as almost to defy the cutter's craft. 

 The sawing of it into halves was a long and painful task, and the two men 

 now employed in hollowing it out seem given up to the most slow-going task 

 conceivable at the time present since more than two can not work, and the 

 impression made by their picks in the huge mass is a thing to be measured 

 from week to week, not day to day. There is ten months' more work to be 

 done ere the adamant rock will be shaped and smoothed into the required 

 form. The color is of an intense deep gray, mottled with black and pale buff, 

 and streaked with veins of white." 



IMPROVEMENTS IN PRINTING-MACHINES. 



Sroion's Color Press. A printing-press has been recently patented by Mr. 

 Samuel Brown, of Syracuse, New York, which is capable of printing four colors 

 at one impression, and will throw off about 500 impressions per hour. The 

 press is on the "platten,"or "flat impression" principle, and in general appear- 

 ance resembles the Adams's press. Each colored ink is distributed on a sep- 

 arate roller, and all move horizontally across the form at the same time, but 

 at different levels the blue roller, for example, being beneath the black, and 

 the yellow and red ranging still further below. Those portions of the "form" 

 which are to be of any given color are "locked up" in separate small "chases," 

 and as the bed of the press sinks down after every impression, these chases 

 are stopped by pins projecting from the sides, each at their proper level, to 

 receive the desired color. 



Babcoctts Polychromatic Press. This press, patented by Messrs. Babcock, 

 of Westerly, Rhode Island, is far superior to the above for every variety of 

 small work. In this the paper is laid upon a revolving cylinder, or rather 

 parallelepiped, with four flat faces, and is firmly held by the usual means. 

 The paper is laid on the upper face, after which a quarter revolution presents 

 a new face to receive paper, and presents the paper already laid t<5 the action- 

 of a form which moves horizontally from the side. Another quarter revolution 

 presents this first sheet to the action of another form, rising from beneath, of 

 a diiVerent color; and a third movement gives it a third impression. A fourth 



