224 Review of the Practical Tourist. 
heads (which are formed by a fifth person) over the shank of the 
wire. A sixth person now takes the rudely formed pins, rivets the 
heads and passes them to a seventh workman, who whitens them by 
means of a composition of melted tin. The scouring and brighten- 
ing or polishing occupies another hand, and the ninth in the series is 
busily engaged in sticking the pins into papers for packing. This 
completes the operation of manufacturing the little article, which for 
its apparent insignificance, is made the subject of every diminishing 
comparison ; but which, however, in the aggregate amount, forms an 
important staple article of business, affording employment and the 
means of subsistence to many hundred persons.” 
He adds in a note that-the quantity of pins annually made in Eng- 
land, as appears from a published statement, has been valued at four 
millions of dollars. He describes, also, a machine for making them 
constructed, by an ingenious American, in London, which accom- 
plishes all the above processes except tinning and packing; and sev- 
eral of the machines may be attended by one boy. The pins made 
by this machinery differ from those made by hand in being headed 
like cut nails from the shaft of the metal, and therefore the heads 
are not liable to be slipped over the body of the pin. 
The origin of the term pig-iron is not generally known, and ap- 
pears from our author to be this. The metal, in English founderies, 
flows from the furnace like melted lava, first into a broad deep chan- 
nel moulded in the sand to receive it; and from thence it diverges 
and flows into numerous smaller channels, arranged regularly at right 
angles on each side of the main one. When the iron was originally 
cast in this form, the workmen regarded the great central channel of 
molten metal as bearing a resemblance to a sow extended at length ; 
and the smaller channels filled with metal on each side of the large 
one, they fancied to bear also some similitude to a litter of sucking 
pigs. Hence they termed these ingots “ pig-iron.”* 
_ “Instead of bellows of the ordinary form, cast iron cylinders, 
larger than those of steam engines, and similarly furnished. with a 
yorking piston, are used in Birmingham furnaces to create the blast 
of air which is propelled into the glowing furnace through pipes, with 
@ roaring sound, audible at a considerable distance, and truly resem- 
bling those of a‘ mighty rushing wind.’”+ 3 
Perera SW OS 
* This explanation Was current in this country many years since.—Ep. 
t This kind of bellows is now used in some of our founderies: ¢, g. at Canaam 
Falls, Ct.—Ep. Re oe . fre 
