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 thera 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 litde 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 5 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 htter 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 

 working piston, are used in Birmingham furnaces to create the blast 

 ofair which is propelled into the glowing furnace through pipes, with 

 a roaring sound, audible at a considerable distance, and truly resem- 

 bling those of a ' mighty rushing wind.'"f 



* This explanation was current in this country many years since. — Ed. 

 t This kind of bellows is now used in some of our founderies: e. g. at Canaan 

 Falls, Ct.— Ed. 



