142 SALMONIA. 



purest kind — such as is procured from the 

 nails of old horse-shoes. This must be 

 made by cementation with charcoal into 

 good soft steel, and that into bars or wires 

 of different thickness for different sized 

 hooks, and then annealed. For the larger 

 hooks, the bars must be made in such a 

 form as to admit of cutting the barbs ; and 

 each piece, which serves for two hooks, is 

 larger at the ends, so that the bar appears 

 in the form of a double pointed spear, three, 

 four, or five inches long: the bars for the 

 finer hooks are somewhat flattened. The 

 artist works with two files, one finer than 

 the other for giving the point and polishing 

 the hook, and begins by making the barb, 

 taking care not to cut too deep, and filing 

 on a piece of hard wood, such as box wood, 

 with a dent to receive the bar made by the 

 edge of the file. The barb being made, the 

 shank is thinned and made flat, and the 

 polishing file applied to it; and by a turn of 

 the wrist round a circular pincers, the neces- 

 sary degree of curvature is given to it. The 

 hook is then cut from the bar, heated red 



