now made to fabricate net, three, and even four yards in width, thus increasing the speed of the machinery twelvefold. "To accomplish these surprising improvements, one gentleman has expended the whole of his property, amounting to from 50,000l. to 70,000l., whilst others have made similar sacrifices, in proportion to their means. "That in addition to the improvement upon the principle of the original machine, other modifications of the principle of making bobbin-nets, by the bobbin and carriage, have been accomplished:-by traversing the warp instead of the bobbin-thread; by placing the carriages in a single line, instead of a double line, as in the original in=vention; all of which improvements or modifications have been made with an immense outlay of capital, and by intense study, care, ingenuity, and perseverance. That in addition to which, though the original machine was only calculated to make plain net in a broad piece, unornamented, yet, by the application of unceasing ingenuity, regardless of expense, various ornaments have been worked into the net by machinery, whilst the net, instead of being made in broad pieces, is worked into slips, exactly imitating the cushion net. The result of making such lace by machinery has been to reduce the foreign cushtion lace workers to less than a tenth in number, and England has become a great exporting nation for lace, to the amount of two millions annually, instead of being an importing nation to nearly that amount. Permit your memorialists here to draw your Lordships' particular attention to a recapitulation of the exact position of their trade. Extraordinary study, skill, and invention were applied for 40 years to make the first bobbin-net machine; then continued application for 20 years more has been necessary to bring it to its present degree of perfection. The vast amount of capital sunk during the last 20 years in the machinery now employed, is seen in the incontrovertible fact that, out of the 5000 bobbin-net machines now employed in the English trade, the 3500 machines first constructed, at a cost of two millions sterling, have, by improvements alone, been reduced to the value of 200,000l., leaving the English trade minus 1,800,000l. If continental nations succeeded in obtaining a sufficient number of our improved machines to supply themselves, which is their present effort and design, no part of the outlay in invention and improvement can ever be regained; and your Lordships will perceive the jeopardy in which. these continental rival manufactories will place our trade, in which 2,000,000/. is still invested in capital, and 2,500,000l. is paid yearly in wages to between 150,000 and 200,000 persons." 4 1 Until the discovery of the bobbin-net machine, all lace was made by an appended machinery to the stocking frame. Sixteen descriptions of bobbin-net machines were atteinpted (and some of them brought to work) previous to Mr. Heathcote's patent in 1839. An analysis of the whole of the inventions in lace machinery gives the following results: Inventions, previous to Heathcote's patent, for making bobbin-net, 16 Inventions on the double-tier principle, Inventions on the traverse-warp principle, Inventions on the pusher principle, Inventions on Levers's principle, Inventions to make fender-net, called loop-net, Inventions to make foreign cushion-net by machinery, 121 The number of inventions in warp lace is not quite so numerous, but they are equally important. The invention of the thread-carrier, in 1789, more than doubled the speed of the loom and the stocking frame, and is regarded as the fourdation of the fly-shuttle and other momentous improvements in manufacturing skill. The following are modes of work of fabricating lace and framework knitted manufactures, introduced from foreign states:1. Round-fingered gloves from Madrid in Spain. 2. Tuck-ribs from Lyons in France. 3. Plated plain work from Nismes in France. 4. Figured warp shawls, the colors worked in on the frame, as practised by Messrs. Hames, at Melbourn. From Lyons. 5. Figured-warp handkerchiefs in various devices, by open works, &c. Lyons. 6. Porcupine point-net scarfs. Troyes and Lyons. 7. Sandal open work plain silk shammies. Paris and Troyes. 8. Knotted hose without seam. Lyons and Barcelona. 9. Round feet in hose. France and Spain. 10. Figured-tied silk stockings. Now obsolete. France. 11. Chevening by hand. France. 12. Chevening in gold and silver, as well as silk, on the frame. Lost. From Cordova and Seville in Spain. The trade has now nearly left those places, and has removed to Barcelona, Valencia, Madrid, and Talavera de la Reyna. The following are inventions used by foreign states, unknown, of at least not practised in these kingdoms: 1. Pin machine for making point-net. Lost to the English. France, 2. Trico Berlin machine for making lace in stripes, and to represent feathered work. France, Prussia, Saxony. 3. Cylinder-warp machine to flower the net on the frame. France. 4. Cylinder-tickler machine for making fancy net-hose. France. 5. Machine for working plain stocking-work in colored figures, the same as knit, by using a number of colored bobbins, so as to make a representation of flowers, &c. Barcelona and Turin. 6. Machine for making a sort of Brussels lace in the plain súk stocking. Valencia in Spain. 7. Metier au Griffre, or frame on two trucks, having no half-jack, and only a top cramp on jack-springs. France. 8. Revolving slur-wheel stocking frame, which forces down the jacks without a slur-cock, for cold countries where jacks would not fall. Denmark, Russia, United States of America. In the preceding enumeration of the various inventions that have been made from time to time, it has been shown that the lace trade has emanated from the stocking-frame, as well as the hosiery trade; I have not therefore attempted to dissever the connexion existing between them (which locality seems also to aid in perpetuating) by separate descriptions of the improved machinery which now relates exclusively to the one or to the other. Those familiar with either trade will at once discover, and be enabled to make the distinction. It is, however, I think manifest that the popular opinion that the stocking frame has received no improvement since its first formation is erroneous, and that time has introduced into this machine many important and salutary amendments. Its peculiar characteristic of having escaped the propelling and invincible power of steam, to which even the winds and the waves may be said to have been constrained to submit, has been ascribed to the fact that the varied movements of the body, hands, and legs, which are each called into action in the working of a stocking frame, are all necessarily mainly regulated and guided by the eye. In the finer work especially, the tax upon this organ is often of great severity, which is shown by the number of middle-aged men who are found using spectacles when at work; and confirmed still further by the fact that, as age advances on the operative, he is invariably found receding from the work of the finer to the coarser gauged frames, long before bodily decrepitude would necessitate the change. Other and totally different causes may have contributed to discourage any attempt to apply mechanical power to the stocking frame. If all obstacles to a correct and properly made article of hosiery by such means could be overcome, it is doubtful whether, in a pecuniary point of view, it would be a measure of economy in the employers to adopt it. While wages remain, as they have done for years past, almost at the minimum of existence to the workman: while custom sanctions, and his defenceless poverty forces him to subunit to pay au exorbitant and disproportionale weekly rent for the machine in which he works; while the mode of constructing the business remains in force, which actually prescribes the very limits of the labor he shall perform, as subsequently shown in the practice of stinting; and while at any time the employer can at little sacrifice to himself lay down his one, his ten, or his hundred frames,-even the rental of the places in which they stand, when at work, being paid by the workmen, there must be great advantages clearly manifested as derivable from any new system of production, which shall preponderate over those yielded by the present one. Lond. Mech. Mag. Application of Electricity in the Extraction of Metals. At a recent meeting of the Society of Arts, Mr. Whishaw (secretary) read a paper, by Mr. Napier, "On Separating Metals from their Ores by means of Electricity." The author's mode of operation is as fo lows:-He uses a blacklead crucible, lined inside, within an inch two of the bottom, with a coating of fire-clay, which is allowed t dry, and a second and third coat superadded; the ore to be operati on (which, if a sulphate, should be previously roasted) is put into the crucible, together with a little lime or other flux for the purpose giving it fluidity. The crucible, with its contents, is then placed i common crucible furnace; a battery of zinc and copper is prepared with five pair of plates, excited by very dilute sulphuric acid; to the zinc of this battery is attached an iron rod, the end of which is inserted in the furnace, and caused to touch the outside of the crucible; an ther rod, either of iron or copper, is used, having at one extremity disk of iron or coke, which is made to rest on the surface of the fused mass in the crucible. The electricity is thus passed down throug the whole fluid mass in the crucible, and in the course of an hour the metal is separated from the ore and deposited at the bottom. Ibid Submarine Currents. M. Arago presented to the Academy of Sciences, Paris, in the name of M. Aimè, two instruments, one to ascertain the direction of submarine currents, the other to measure their speed. These instruments were accompanied by an account of several experiments which had been made with them: it states, amongst other things, that the greatest speed of the currents on the coasts is on the coast of Africa, between Algiers and Bona, and not, as is generally supposed, between Gib raltar and Algiers, and that in the Straits of Gibraltar there are three parallel currents. Near the coasts the direction is from east to west. whereas the central current proceeds constantly from the west to the east; the latter is seven miles wide between Trafalgar and Cape Spar tel. The width of the strait, at its narrowest part, is twelve miles: between Trafalgar and Cape Spartel it is twenty-seven miles; and fifteen miles between the Point of Europe and Ceuta. Lond. Mining Jour. Quantity of Coals, Cinders, and Culm, shipped at the several Ports of Great Britain, during the years 1843 and 1844. A return, moved for by Mr. Vivian, M. P., shows that the total quantities of coals, cinders, and culm, shipped at the several ports of the United Kingdom coast ways to other ports of the United Kingdom. amounted altogether in 1843 to 7,447,084 tons, of which 7.138,107 were coals; and in 1844, to 7,377,862 tons, of which 7,017,113 were coals. The quantities exported to foreign countries amounted in 1843 to 1,866,211 tons of which 1,367,925 tons were large, and 452,356 small coals. The declared value of the whole amounted to 690,424 The large coals were chiefly exported to Russia, Denmark, Prussia. Germany, Holland, and France, the United States of America, the British West Indies, and Brazil. France alone took 358,874 tons of large coal, and 99,720 of small coal. The quantities exported in 1844 amounted to 1,289,957 tons of large, and 408,424 tons of small coal, the declared value of all the coals, cinders, and culm being, 672,056/. The total amount of duties received on the coals exported in 1844 appears to have been 118,4937.-viz., 76,095l. on those exported in British, and 40,7087. on those exported in foreign ships entitled to the privileges conferred by treaties of reciprocity. The rates of duty were, on coals exported in British ships to foreign countries, 2s. per ton, and in foreign ships 4s. per ton. Ibid. On the Connexion between the Winds of the St. Lawrence and the Movements of the Barometer. By W. KELLY, M. D., Surgeon ER. N., attached to the Naval Surveying Party on the River St. Lawrence. The author adduces a great number of observations, which are in opposition to the generally received opinion, that the mercury in the barometer has always a tendency to fall when the wind is strong, During a period of fifteen years passed in the Gulf and River St. Lawrence, he found that the barometer as frequently rises as falls under the prevalence of a strong wind; and that the winds often blew with a greater force with a rising than with a falling barometer. He gives a circumstantial account of the progress and course of various gales which came under his observation during that period, and from which he infers the existence of a steady connexion between the prevailing winds of this region and the movements of the barometer, and enters into an inquiry into the mode in which that instrument is affected by them. The extensive valley of the St. Lawrence is bounded at its lower part, for a distance of nearly 500 miles, by ranges of hills, rising on each side to a considerable elevation. Within this space the ordinary winds follow the course of the river: and in almost every instance where they approach from windward, the barometer rises with them; and when, on the other hand, the wind approaches from leeward, the barometer not only falls before the arrival of the wind, but continues to fall until it has subsided. An appendix is subjoined, containing extracts from the tabular register of the barometer and winds at various points in the valley of the St. Lawrence, during the years 1834 and 1835, accompanied by remarks on different points deserving notice in particular cases.-Proceed. Royal Soc. London Athenæum. On the Elliptic Polarization of Light by Reflexion from Metallic Surfaces. By the REV. BADEN POWELL. In a former paper, published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1843, the author gave an account of the observations he had made on the phenomena of elliptic polarization by reflexion from certain metallic surfaces, but with reference only to one class of comparative results. He has since pursued the inquiry into other relations besides those at first contemplated; and the present paper is devoted to the |