July 1, 1865.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES. 50 1 



600,000 pairs of gloves a year, which, at the rate of 301". a dozen, repre- 

 sent a sum of from 1,600,0001. to 1,700,0001'. The Greenoble manu- 

 factory employs about 600 women in putting the glove on the pattern, 

 then under the cutting press, and preparing it otherwise for the needle. 

 Such women, when clever, earn from 70f. to 80f. a month. The 

 remuneration for sewing gloves is at the rate of about 4f. 50c. a dozen 

 with one button and 4f. 75c. with two, but the sewer must find her own 

 thread. The cutting of precious stones, whether genuine or imitation, 

 is a trade that has taken up its abode on the heights of the Jura, at 

 Septmencel (except the diamond, which is cut by machinery at 

 Amsterdam). At the place we have mentioned the women are con- 

 stantly employed in making imitation jewels, in drilling holes into 

 rubies for watchmakers, &c, and they earn thereby about 75c. per day, 

 the earnings of the men in the same sort of work being 4f. 50c. 



In making hollow gold chains, the gold is put round copper links, and 

 the copper is afterwards extracted by making a small incision in each 

 link and laying the chains for a time in aquafortis. 



Manufacture of Gold-leaf. — It is found that a minute percentage 

 of silver and copper is necessary to give the gold for gold-leaf a proper 

 malleable quality — a percentage of perhaps one in seventy or eighty. 

 The refiner manages this alloy, and brings the costly product to a certain 

 stage of completion ; he melts the gold and the cheaper alloys in a black- 

 lead crucible ; pours the molten metal into an ingot mould, six or 

 eight inches long, removes the solidified and coated ingot from its mould, 

 and passes it repeatedly between two steel rollers until it assumes the 

 thickness of a ribbon ; and this ribbon — about one-eight-hundredth of 

 an inch in thickness, and presenting a surface of about five hundred 

 square inches to an ounce — passes now to the hands of the goldbeater. 

 The working tools, the processes, and the products of a goldbeater are 

 all remarkable. That puzzling material, " goldbeaters' skin," is an in- 

 dispensable aid to him ; it is a membrane of extreme thinness and 

 delicacy, but yet tough and strong, procured from the intestines of the 

 ox. Eight hundred pieces of this skin, four inches square, constitute a 

 packet with which the goldbeater labours ! A hundred and fifty bits 

 of ribbon-gold, an inch square, are interleaved with as many vellum 

 leaver four inches square ; they are beaten for a long time with a 

 ponderous hammer on a smooth marble slab, until the gold has thinned 

 and expanded to the size of the vellum. The gold is then liberated from 

 the vellum, and each piece cut into four ; the hundred and fifty thus 

 become six hundred, and these are interleaved with six hundred pieces 

 of goldbeater's skin, which are then packed into a compact mass. 

 Another beating then takes place — more careful, more delicate, more 

 precise than the first —until the gold has expanded so that it requires to 

 be again released. The leaves are again divided into four, by which the 

 six hundred become twenty-four hundred, and these are divided into three 

 parcels of eight hundred each, and each parcel is subjected to a third 



