the Progress of the Useful Arts. 32^ 



of workmanship, and to excite his emulation b^ rewarding supe- 

 rior merit. Variations almost insensible, in the modes of oper- 

 ating, lead to important changes in the character of the effects. 

 Thus we attempt in vain to file a small surface flat while it is 

 held firmly in the vice, yet the operation becomes easy when a 

 small vibratory motion is allowed. Again, if we attempt to hone 

 a penknife with the thumb towards the back of the blade, we 

 soon produce a rounded edge, but on reversing the position of 

 the blade, a thin edge is preserved. The turning-graver when 

 held in one position, makes criddled work ; yet, when placed in 

 another scarcely different, it produces a clean surface. The 

 spokesheaver, when used by a beginner, is apt to round the end 

 of a piece of wood, but a very little deviation from the ruder 

 way of holding it preserves the proper outline. Thousands of 

 niceties such as these would form the workman's manual. Those 

 workmen who have constantly resided in an isolated district, are 

 often found ignorant of the simplest artifices of their craft ; while 

 those again who have had communication with numbers of their 

 own trade become, from that intercourse, expert operators. 

 Keeping facts such as these in view, our Society should gladly 

 receive the statements of the artizan, and should lend a willing 

 ear to communications^ though their subject might be of less im- 

 portance than a substitute for steam. By rendering this a place 

 where the workman might hear the different processes described, 

 and the principles of them explained ; where he might learn the 

 cause of the advantages of one method over another, and the 

 source of the imperfections of all operations, we would provide 

 an inexhaustible fund of instruction for ourselves, and, at the 

 same time, would give a powerful assistance to the progress of 

 invention. 



Those improvements which seem likely to produce a decided 

 efi'ect, and those inventions that have required the concurrence 

 of great ingenuity and severe exertiouj merit our peculiar atten- 

 tion ; and considerable difference of opinion exists as to how we 

 ought to proceed in our attempts at encouragement. We may 

 either propose prizes for distinct objects, or may generally offer 

 rewards for such improvements as appear best deserving of them. 

 In the one way we attempt to lead the mind, in the other, we 

 only approve of what has been done. Of the first, we have 



