66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



position must "be made a little coarser. Here the " cut and try " 

 method must again be patiently applied. 



At length, when the young man can get his watches so that 

 they will not vary more than two and a half seconds a day, 

 whether cold or warm, and no matter how many times they are 

 changed in position, he is entitled to a certificate from the astro- 

 nomical observatory where the watches are tested, that he is a 

 competent watchmaker. 



In the United States men or women or boys learn to run, per- 

 haps, one little machine in a large factory, which cuts or polishes 

 one small part, and do not try or need to understand the whole 

 trade of watchmaking. But in Switzerland the man who makes 

 a watch or any part of it is a watchmaker always, although he 

 will sooner or later decide what part of watchmaking he prefers, 

 and manufacturers will then bring him just that work to do. 

 One man may make a business of merely polishing screw-heads, 

 another does nothing but time watches, etc. There are no large 

 watch factories in Switzerland, such as we have, but all their 

 myriads of watches have been passed round through the little 

 shops of these watchmakers before they have got all their parts 

 and are ready for the pocket. 



One of the consequences of the Swiss mode of making a watch 

 is, that its every part is made for that particular watch. This is 

 true not only of the movement but the case. Cases are not inter- 

 changeable as with us. Each case is made to fit a given move- 

 ment, and will not, unless by sheer accident, fit another. A dealer 

 requiring watches must give his order say for a dozen to the 

 watchmaker who is making a specialty of the earlier parts of the 

 work, and then the dealer must follow his order on until it is 

 completed and cased. 



After observing the thoroughness of the training of which the 

 Swiss workman has the advantage, one hardly wonders that the 

 Swiss are able to produce at once the quantity and quality of 

 watch work for which they are justly famed. 



CoisroERNixa famines in India, which were formerly often terrible, Mr. 0. E. D. 

 Black, in his third decennial report of progress, does not deny the existence of 

 " habitually starving millions," but maintains that, taking the country as a whole, 

 it can always furnish food enough for all its inhabitants. The diflSculty has hith- 

 erto been in moving the surplus of one or other locality to the spots where de- 

 ficiency exists. This has now been mainly overcome, and the days when grain 

 was selling at famine prices in one district and rotting on the ground in another 

 are gone. Registered meteorological observations indicate that, as a rule, two 

 thirds of India are affected each year, either favorably or prejudicially, differently 

 from the other third. There is no record of a universal failure of crops, any more 

 than of a general harvest above the average. 



