animal. These flat pieces are in themselves a
puzzle; for it is difficult to see how the lathe
can have had anything to do with their production.
The truth is, the wood is first turned
into rings. Say that a horse three inches long
is to be fabricated; A block of soft pine-wood is
prepared, and cut into a slab three inches thick,
by perhaps fifteen inches in diameter: the grain
running in the direction of the thickness. Out of
this circular slab a circular piece is cut from the
centre, possibly six inches in diameter, leaving
the slab in the form of a ring, like an extra
thick india-rubber elastic band. While this
ring is in the lathe, the turner applies his
chisels and gouges to it in every part, on the
outer edge, on the inner edge, and on both
sides. All sorts of curves are made, now deep,
now shallow; now convex, now concave; now
with single curvature, now with double. A
looker-on could hardly by any possibility guess
what these curvings and twistings have to do
with each other, for the ring is still a ring and
nothing else; but the cunning workman has
got it all in his mind's eye. When the turning
is finished, the ring is bisected or cut across,
not into two slices, but into two segments or
semicircular pieces. Looking at either end of
either piece, lo! there is the profile of a horse—
without a tail, certainly, but a respectably good
horse in other respects. The secret is now
divulged. The turner, while the ring or annulus
is in the lathe—a Saturn's ring without a Saturn
—turns the outer edge into the profile of the
top of the head and the back of a horse, the
one flat surface into the profile of the chest and
the fore legs, the other fiat surface into the profile
of the hind quarters and hind legs, and the inner
edge of the ring into the profile of the belly and
the deep recess between the fore and hind legs.
The curvatures are really very well done, for
the workmen have good models to copy from,
and long practice gives them accuracy of hand
and eye.

An endless ring of tailless horses has been
produced, doubtless the most important part
of the affair; but there is much ingenuity yet
to be shown in developing from this abstract
ring a certain number of single, concrete,
individual, proper Noah's Ark horses, with proper
Noah's Ark tails. The ring is chopped or sawn
up into a great many pieces. Each piece is
thicker at one end than the other, because the
outer diameter of the ring was necessarily
greater than the inner; but with this allowance,
each piece may be considered flat. The thick
end is the head of the horse, the thin end the
hind quarter; one projecting piece represents
the position and profile of the fore legs, but they
are not separated; and similarly of the hind legs.
Now is the time for the carver to set to work.
He takes the piece of wood in hand, equalises
the thickness where needful, and pares off the
sharp edges; he separates into two ears the little
projecting piece which juts out from the head,
separates into two pairs of legs the two projecting
pieces which jut out from the body, and makes a
respectable pair of eyes, with nostrils and mouth
of proper thorough-bred character; he jags the
back of the neck in the proper way to form a mane,
and makes, not a tail, but a little recess to
which a tail may comfortably be glued. The
tail is a separate affair. An endless ring of
horses' tails is first turned in a lathe. A much
smaller slab, smaller in diameter and in thickness
than the other, is cut into an annulus
or ring; and this ring is turned by tools on
both edges and both sides. When bisected,
each end of each half of the ring exhibits the
profile of a horse's tail; and when cut up into
small bits, each bit has the wherewithal in it
for fashioning one tail. After the carver has
done his work, each horse receives its proper
tail; and they are all proper long tails too,
such as nature may be supposed to have made,
and not the clipped and cropped affairs which
farriers and grooms produce.

This continuous ring system is carried faithfully
through the whole Noah's Ark family. One big
slab is for an endless ring of elephants; another
of appropriate size for camels; others for lions,
leopards, wolves, foxes, dogs, donkeys, ducks, and
all the rest. Sometimes the ears are so shaped
as not very conveniently to be produced in the
same ring as the other part of the animal; in
this case an endless ring of ears is made, and
chopped up into twice as many ears as there are
animals. Elephants' trunks stick out in a way
that would perplex the turner somewhat; he
therefore makes an endless ring of trunks, chops
it up, and hands over the pieces to the carver to
be fashioned into as many trunks as there are
elephants. In some instances, where the animal is
rather a bullet-headed sort of an individual, the
head is turned in a lathe separately, and glued on
to the headless body. If a carnivorous animal has
a tail very much like that of one of the graminivorous
sort, the carver says nothing about it, but
makes the same endless ring of tails serve both;
or they may belong to the same order but
different families—as, for instance, the camel and
the cow, which are presented by these Noah's
Ark people with tails cut from the same endless
ring. Other toys are made in the same way.
Those eternal soldiers which German boys are
always supposed to love so much, as if there were
no end of Schleswig-Holsteins for them to
conquer, are—if made of wood—(for tin soldiers are
also immensely in request) turned separately in
a lathe, so far as their martial frames admit of
this mode of shaping; but their muskets, and
some other portions, are made on the endless
ring system. All this may be seen very well at
Kew; for there are the blocks of soft pine, the
slabs cut from them (with the grain of the wood
in the direction of the thickness), the rings
turned from the slabs, the turnings and curvatures
of the rings, the profile of an animal seen
at each end, the slices cut from each ring, the
animal fashioned from each slice, the ring of
tails, the separate tails from each ring, the
animal properly tailed in all its glory, and a
painted specimen or two to show the finished
form in which the loving couples go into the
Ark—pigs not so much smaller than elephants
as they ought to be, but piggishly shaped
nevertheless.