display of colonial woods, which were built
up into fanciful trophies at the International
Exhibition of eighteen hundred and sixty-two,
has been transferred to one of these museums;
and a noble collection it makes.

We know comparatively little in England
of the minor uses of wood. We use wood
enough in building houses and railway structures;
our carriage-builders and wheelwrights
cut up and fashion a great deal more; and
our cabinet-makers know how to stock our
rooms with furniture, from three-legged stools
up to costly cabinets; but implements and
minor articles are less extensively made of
wood in England than in foreign countries
—partly because our forests are becoming
thinned, and partly because iron and iron-work
are so abundant and cheap. In America,
matters are very different. There are thousands
of square miles of forest which belong to no one
in particular, and the wood of which may be
claimed by those who are at the trouble of felling
the trees. Nay, a backwoodsman would be very
glad to effect a clearing on such terms as these,
seeing that the trees encumber the ground on
which he wishes to grow corn-crops. The wood,
when the trees have been felled and converted
into boards and planks, is applied to almost
countless purposes of use. Of use, we say; for
the Americans are too bustling a people to
devote much time to the fabricating of
ornaments: they prefer to buy these ready made
from Britishers and other Europeans. Pails,
bowls, washing-machines, wringing-machines,
knife-cleaning boards, neat light vehicles, neat
light furniture, dairy vessels, kitchen utensils,
all are made by the Americans of clean tidy-
looking wood, and are sold at very low prices.
Machinery is used to a large extent in this
turnery and woodware; the manufacturers not
having the fear of strikes before their eyes, use
machines just where they think this kind of aid
is likely to be most serviceable. The way in
which they get a little bowl out of a big bowl,
and this out of a bigger, and this out of a bigger
still, is a notable example of economy in
workmanship. On the continent of Europe the
woodworkers are mostly handicraftsmen, who niggle
away at their little bits of wood without much aid
from machinery. Witness the briar-root pipes
of St. Claude. Smart young fellows who sport
this kind of smoking-bowl in England, neither
know nor care for the fact that it comes from a
secluded spot in the Jura Mountains. Men and
women, boys and girls, earn from threepence to
four shillings a day in various little bits of
carved and turned work; but the crack wages
are paid to the briar-root pipe-makers. England
imports many more than she smokes, and sends
off the rest to America. M. Audiganne says
that "in those mouster armies which have
sprung up so suddenly on the soil of the great
republic, there is scarcely a soldier but has a
St. Claude briar-root pipe in his pocket." The
truth is, that, unlike cutties and meerschaums,
and other clay or earthen pipes, these briar-root
productions are very strong, and will bear a
great deal of knocking about. The same French
writer says that when his countrymen came here.
to see our International Exhibition, some of
them bought and carried home specimens of
these pipes as English curiosities: not aware
that, the little French town of St. Claude was
the place of their production.

In Germany the wood-work, so far as English
importers know anything of it, is mostly in the
form of small trinkets and toys for children.
The production of these is immense. In the
Tyrol, and near the Thuringian Forest, in the
middle states of the ill-organised confederacy,
and wherever forests abound, there the peasants
spend much of their time in making toys.
In the Tyrol, for example, there is a valley
called the Grödnerthal, about twenty miles
long, in which the rough climate and barren
soil will not suffice to grow corn for the
inhabitants, who are rather numerous. Shut
out from the agricultural labour customary in
other districts, the people earn their bread
chiefly by wood carving. They make toys of
numberless kinds (in which Noah's Ark animals
are very predominant) of the soft wood of the
Siberian pine—known to the Germans as
ziebelnusskiefer. The tree is of slow growth, found
on the higher slopes of the valley, but now
becoming scarce, owing to the improvidence of
the peasants in cutting down the forests without
saving or planting others to succeed them.
For a hundred years and more the peasants have
been carvers. Nearly every cottage is a workshop.
All the occupants, male and female,
down to very young children, seat themselves
round a table, and fashion their little bits of wood.
They use twenty or thirty different kinds of
tools, under the magic of which the wood is
transformed into a dog, a lion, a man, or what
not. Agents represent these carvers in various
cities of Europe, to dispose of the wares; but
they nearly all find their way back again to their
native valleys, to spend their earnings in peace.

Many of the specimens shown at the Kew
museums are more elaborate than those which
could be produced wholly by hand. A turning-
lathe of some power must have been needed.
Indeed, the manner in which these zoological
productions are fabricated is exceedingly curious,
and is little likely to be anticipated by ordinary
observers. Who, for instance, would imagine
for a moment that a wooden horse, elephant, or
tiger, or any other member of the Noah's Ark
family, could be turned in a lathe, like a ball,
bowl, or bedpost? How could the turner's
cutting tool, while the piece of wood is rotating
in the lathe, make the head stick out in the front,
and the ears at the top, and the tail in the rear,
and the legs underneath? And how could the
animal be made longer than he is high, and higher
than he is broad? And how could all the ins
and outs, the ups and downs, the swellings and
sinkings, be produced by a manipulation which
only seems suitable for circular objects? These
questions are all fair ones, and deserve a fair
answer. The articles, then, are not fully made
in the lathe; they are brought to the state of
flat pieces, the outline or contour of which bears
an approximate resemblance to the profile of an