MECHANICS AND USEFUL ARTS. 101 



curves grew. He was aware that he might be told that the higher curve, 

 were never taught; but his answer was, that they might easily be taught, 

 and that they were very easy of comprehension. In order to effect this, 

 somebody who understood the subject would have to be prevailed upon, not 

 to write a book, but to put down in the shortest and plainest language what 

 he knew of curves. This would be a treatise which the workman could 

 understand. The lecturer then explained, with the aid of the board, the 

 various mathematical figures known as conic sections, parabola, ellipses 

 hyperbola, and the movement of the comets. These, he contended, might 

 be learned so as to make the workman master of the principle within six 

 months. He also thought that there ought to be a large quantity of appa- 

 ratus a sort of inventory of education of every conceivable shape and 

 object. In addition to these models, he would have the school-room hung 

 round, not with pictures of animals, but with solid bodies, which could be 

 explained and drawn. He would, in fact, impart any kind of practical rather 

 than book knowledge. If drawings merely were used instead of models, he 

 did not think the student could imbibe so correct a notion of the object to be 

 produced or delineated. There was a mode of studying forms called la theorie 

 d<- d&vdappement, but the plain English meant nothing more than making flat 

 surfaces into round and angular forms, as models now made from sheets of 

 paper, which was a most valuable mode of studying forms. Machinery 

 could now be obtained to do all the unintellectual drudgery of mechan- 

 ism. He was not opposed to machinery, and had no apprehension that 

 it would supersede skilled intellectual handicraft. He would employ 

 machinery to do all the drudgery that degraded the workman into a beast 

 of burden. He would give him higher views of mathematics; he would 

 show him that he was an intellectual, thinking being, with a soul for high 



and immortal things. 



IMPROVED NAILS. 



A French mechanician states that nails formed with two sloping edges may 

 be driven into thin wood without risk of splitting it, provided they are made 

 to cut the wood across the grain. He recommends manufacturers to make 

 nails of this kind in order to save carpenters the trouble and loss of time 



involved in using a gimlet or brad-awl. 



A GREAT MACHINE FOR A SIMPLE PURPOSE, TURNING BAGS BY 



STEAM. 



"We have recently examined a machine more complicated than a stocking 

 loom for the simple purpose of turning cloth bags (after they have been 

 sewed or woven) the right side out! "Can it be," we asked the inventor, 

 " that there is a demand for machinery for performing so trifling an opera- 

 tion as this?" 



"O, yes," he said; "it takes as much time to turn a bag as it does to 

 make it, at the present day. In our neighborhood there are two large cotton 

 manufactories devoted exclusively to making cloth for bags. In the country 

 there are probably three hundred bag manufacturers, employing from two to 

 fifty turners each, and one of these machines will do the work of thirty hands. 

 One of the large manufacturers in this city told me that the machine, besides 

 saving in wages, would enable him to effect considerable economy in his rent, 



9* 



