small depth; into the grooves thus formed
an amalgam of mercury and tin is
introduced; and this amalgam forms a brilliant
silvery-looking device on a dark ground.
Somewhat analogous to this is the niello, so
much practised by the Italians many
centuries ago. A design was etched with a
graver on a plate of gold, silver, or copper;
the lines thus incised were filled in with
niello, a composition of mercury, silver,
lead, and sulphur, melted into the cavities
by means of heat. The plate, after cleansing,
polishing, and burnishing, presented
an appearance something like that of a
pen-and-ink drawing on a metallic ground.
Some of the Italian goldsmiths produced
very beautiful works of art in this way,
pictures, whether so called or not. Charming
specimens of the art may be seen in the
British Museum.

Shall marquetry and parquetry be called
pictures? Not exactly; and yet, if the
pieces were very small, the result would be a
kind of wood mosaic. In marquetry, birds,
flowers, scrolls, and devices in great variety
are produced by inlaying small pieces of
wood of different colours, or different
directions of grain. Even portraits have been thus
developed. In the last century, when this
art was much practised, the different kinds
of wood were sometimes used in their proper
colours, while at other times the same kind
was stained in two or more tints. In
parquetry, now much used in halls and large
rooms, the pieces are larger, because they
are not intended to be so near the eye. If
wood of two or more different colours be
used, a device may easily be made to
develop itself; if only one kind, such as oak,
the pattern depends on placing the grain
of some of the pieces in a different direction
from that of others. When well
managed, the effect is graceful without
being staring or obtrusive. Sometimes
parquetry is a mere veneer on a solid backing;
but in the best kind the pieces, about
an inch thick, combine to form the solid
floor itself.

What shall we say of the little trinkets
with which visitors to Tunbridge Wells
are tempted? The minute fragments of
variously-coloured wood do certainly
sometimes aspire to the pictorial dignity; but
more usually they are prudently limited to
fanciful devices of various kinds. The
same may be said of the ingenious Scotch
boxes made at Mauchline and Laurencekirk.
The closeness of the hinge in these
boxes is a marvel. The box is scooped
out of a solid block of sycamore or planewood;
the cover is fashioned out of another
piece; and each retains its own half of the
wooden hinge, so closely fitting together
that scarcely a line of junction can be seen.
The tartan, or pictorial device, we need not
say much about, as it is painted or printed
on the surface of the wood, not produced
by inlaying.

Mr. Straker's wood pictures attracted a
good deal of attention some years ago.
His method depended on two facts—the
tendency which woody fibres have to swell
when wetted, and to shrink again when
drying; and their tendency, when pressed
down dry, to rise to their former level
permanently when wetted. A design of any
kind is sketched on a panel of wood. A
blunt steel tool or die is worked heavily
but carefully along all the lines of the
device, pressing the surface down into
hollows, but without breaking the grain. The
surface of the panel is then planed away,
down to the level of the depressed portions;
after which, the panel being steeped in
water, the parts which had been hardened
and depressed by the tool will swell up to
their former level, which they will retain
when dry. There is thus produced a
veritable picture in relief. It may be that only
a rough outline of the design is produced
in this way, and that the delicate tools of
the wood-carver are afterwards used to
develop the minute details.

The curious productions known as poker-
pictures, or poker-drawings, have neither
paint nor inlay, neither pressing nor
cutting. They are nothing but panels of wood
in which dark shadings have been produced
by the application of red-hot tools. Many
schoolrooms, many country mansions, and
some churches, are in possession of specimens
of this kind of art. A Study of a
Female head, a Tiger killing Deer, the
Temptation of Christ, Cornelius sending for St.
Peter, the Saviour bearing the Cross, the
Good Samaritan, the Head of a Rabbi,
Oliver Cromwell—these are among the
subjects of such pictures known to have
been produced in this eccentric department
of art. Connoisseurs of poker-pictures
talk about Smith of Skipton, Cranch of
Axminster, Thompson of Wilts, and Collis
of Ireland, as artists of some note. About
the beginning of the present century, there
was an exhibition of poker-pictures in
London, comprising fifty-three specimens by a
Mrs. Nelson, and thirteen by Miss Nelson.
The pictures were, without any high-flown
words, described as having been "done on
wood with hot pokers," and they were to