May 1, 1865.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



THE COMB MANUFACTURE, 475 



Cachar, the profits of plantations would be equally good. In Chittagong, 

 too, the soil is reported well adapted for tea and coffee cultivation. 

 During the past financial year several tea-planters visited the district 

 and applied for grants. Some difficulty is anticipated in making new 

 allotments, " owing to the rather loose and haphazard way in which 

 large tracts of land were, so to speak, given away rent-free for long 

 periods at the settlement of the district." It will be remembered that a 

 sample of Chittagong tea won a medal in the Agricultural Exhibition at 

 Alipore. A small estate has been in cultivation for many years near 

 the Sudder Station, and a considerable number of acres has recently 

 been broken up for the plant in the hill tracts. We find that in one 

 province this portion of British enterprise has trebled itself during the 

 past official year, and in another has doubled itself. The returns of only 

 two tea-growing districts are given in full, but we believe that the same 

 proportion holds good in all. This single branch, tea-planting, has 

 changed the destiny of whole provinces greater in area than England, 

 and turned vast tracts of unhealthy, unprofitable wastes into revenue- 

 paying and life-supporting land. It has belted our North-Eastern fron- 

 tier with a ring of gardens, and placed an advance guard of Englishmen 

 between the plains and the hill tribes. But this is not all. It has 

 furnished an accessible and profitable vent for the overcrowded popu- 

 lation in Bengal proper, and done much to ameliorate the condition of 

 the labouring classes throughout the whole country. — Calcutta English- 



THE COMB MANUFACTURE. 



There are few important industrial operations that are so independent 

 of mechanical contrivances and appliances as the comb manufacture. 



The nature of the horn material worked up is such, that, in few of 

 the processes through which it must be put, are the manipulations of a 

 continuously identical character. Consequently, the hand, the eye, and 

 the judgment, with a small number of simple tools, must still produce 

 those beautiful horn specimens of civilization — so useful in common 

 life, so adorning to beauty, and astonishing to all, for accuracy and fine- 

 ness of finish. 



The comb manufacture is pre-eminently conducive to our national 

 wealth, because therein the value of the raw product is greatly multi- 

 plied. The skilled labour placed on tortoiseshell increases it in value 

 about 40 per cent., while horn (the generally used product) so favoured 

 advances 200 per cent. This latter, rough, uncouth, unattractive, fresh 

 from the head of its occupant, is split, and heated, bent and planed, 

 triturated and polished, pressed and carved and fretted, till at length it 



