MECHANICS AND USEFUL ARTS. 83 



by water prevents the burning or charring of the material not immediately 

 in contact with the metal. 



ARTIFICIAL WOOD. 



In a recent lecture at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, M. Payen called 

 the attention of his hearers to the process of making a kind of ebony, or 

 artificial wood, very hard, very heavy, and capable of receiving a very high 

 polish and a brilliant varnish. M. Ladry, the inventor of this process, takes 

 very fine sawdust, mixes it with blood from the slaughter-houses, and sub- 

 mits the resulting paste to a very heavy pressure obtained by the hydrau- 

 lic press. If the paste has been enclosed in moulds it will take the form 

 of the mould, and resembles pieces of ebony carved by a skilful hand. 



Another curious application of this paste consists in the formation of 

 brushes. The bristles are arranged in the paste while yet soft; the paste is 

 covered by a plate pierced with holes, through which the bristles pass; the 

 pressure is then applied, and brushes are obtained, made of a single piece, 

 cheaper and more lasting than the usual kind. This artificial wood of M. 

 Ladry is much heavier than common Avoods. Cosmos. 



WHY THE SHOE PIXCHES. 



A pamphlet has lately appeared of peculiar interest to that vast multitude 

 of our population who are the victims either of corns or of expensive corn 

 doctors, and who suffer, as some poet has suggested, from a style of bunion 

 which is not altogether conducive to " Pilgrims' Progress." It is translated 

 from the German by a young Edinburgh physician, and published with the 

 following title: " Why the Shoe Pinches; a Contribution to Applied Anat- 

 omy. By Hermann Meyer, M. D., Professor of Anatomy in the University 

 of Zurich. Translated from the German by John Stirling Craig. Edinburgh : 

 Edmonston and Douglas." 



Dr. Meyer, the author, is pronounced one of the highest continental au- 

 thorities on Physiological Anatomy, who has published an important gen- 

 eral text on that science, as well as several treatises on the structure of the 

 foot and knee. In the discussion now under consideration he has already 

 been preceded by Peter Camper, who, in the last century, wrote a paper 

 " On the Best Shoe," and who zealously but ineffectually urged that the 

 foot-gear of man was quite as important a topic as the shoeing of horses, to 

 which so much attention is given. 



Against the prevailing pattern, Dr. Meyer, in his capacity of anatomist, 

 utters an earnest protest. The cut of a shoe, says the Doctor, is not, as the 

 cut of a coat, a matter of indifference. " When Fashion prescribes an ar- 

 bitrary form of shoe, she goes," he asserts, " far beyond her province, and, 

 in reality, arrogates to herself the right of determining the shape of the 

 foot." 



In his opinion the shoemaker ought not only to produce a shoe that docs 

 not pinch, but a shoe so constructed that it will give to a foot distorted by 

 the pinching it has borne already, a fair chance of a return to its right shape, 

 and full possession of its power as a means of carrying the body onward. 

 He tells us that, in measuring a foot for a shoe or boot, the first thing to be 

 considered is the place of the great toe. Upon this toe, in walking, the 

 weight of the whole body turns at every step; in the natural foot, therefore, 



