the marquetrier rises to the dignity of an
artist, and produces wood pictures instead of
unmeaning patterns, then his labour is
frequently called tarsia-work, and he has much
ado to procure fragments of wood suitable in
colour to his wants. If he stain them, the
stain may fade; and hence he loves rather to
use wood in the natural colour than in a
stained state, if he can obtain sufficient
variety.

M. Cremer, an ébéniste or marquetrier of
Paris, has lately produced some beautiful
work in which the pieces of wood were
previously stained by the method of Dr. Boucherie.
This method is exceedingly remarkable, and
bids fair to give rise to many novelties, and
perhaps beauties in the colour of organised
substances. It depends upon the absorption
of saline and other solutions by trees. He
arrived, after many experiments, at a conclusion
that it is far easier to impregnate wood
with any desired solution when the plant is
still full of its own natural juices, than when
the vessels of the felled tree have begun to
contract, and a considerable portion of the
natural humidity of the wood to have
evaporated. He tried at first to impregnate the
wood of the tree while still in a growing
state, causing it to suck up various solutions
by the absorbing power of the leaves. This
plan, through various practical difficulties, he
abandoned; and he then adopted a cheap,
simple, and effective process for impregnating
the felled timber with liquid. He cuts the
trunk of a newly-felled tree into convenient
pieces; he adopts some mode of hollowing
the wood near the centre, and introduces the
liquid into the hollow; he employs great
pressure, sufficient to drive the liquid into all
the pores of the wood. If he would simply
preserve the wood from dry rot, he employs
a solution of sulphate of copper; if he would
harden the wood, he selects a solution of
pyrolignite of iron; if he would increase its
flexibility, elasticity, and incombustibility, he
employs a solution of chloride of calcium; if
he would impart to it any desired colour, he
employs a coloured solution; and thus he
acquires a mastery over the wood, rendering
it obedient to his behests.

What untiring patience many of these
workers in little bits of wood exhibit! Let
us call to mind some of the productions
which all the world went to see in
Hyde Park. Here is M. Bisso's table from
Genoa, on the top of which are the twelve
signs of the zodiac, and a flaming Sol riding in
a flaming chariot, all made of bits of wood.
Here is M. Magni's table, also from Genoa,
and also glorying in the twelve signs of the
zodiac. Here is an ambitious table by M.
Claudo of Nice, in which the battles of the
Nile, Trafalgar, Waterloo, and Moodkee are
represented in marquetry, the coloured pieces
of wood having been skilfully shaded by the
scorching action of hot sand. Here is the
sumptuous pianoforte by Messrs. Broadwood,
with its delicate and graceful ornamentation
in parquetry (if our memory serve us, this
noble instrument has since been presented by
the makers to the Royal Academy of Music).
Here is the octagonal library-table, composed
of fourteen thousand separate pieces of wood.
But greatest and most marvellous, here is
the Spanish table, with a magnifying glass
suspended in front, and a crowd of persons
waiting their turn to examine the mosaic
wood-work through this optical medium; for
the pieces are so small, and the pattern so
delicate, that they can scarcely be appreciated
by the naked eye. M. Perez, of Barcelona,
the maker, says that the table-top contains
three million separate and distinct little bits
of wood. We have not heard of any visitor
having stayed to count them.

Because parquetry rhymes with
marquetry, it does not necessarily follow that
parquetry and marquetry are twin children.
It does nevertheless happen that the one, like
the other, is a kind of inlay or wood-mosaic;
parquetry being more usually applied to
floors, and marquetry to ornamental furniture.
Generally speaking, parquetry is in
two colours only, and the devices are geometrical
patterns rather than pictures. Some of
the parquetry produced on the continent is
very beautiful. Carpets are not used there
so much as with us, and hence there is a
motive for making the floor as attractive as
possible. Some of the more costly specimens
are composed of oak, satinwood, mahogany,
and rosewood; but the average examples
have two kinds only; and a delicate damask-
like effect is occasionally produced by one
single kind of wood alone —the direction of
the grain in the inlay being different from
that in the ground.

Patchwork may consist of bits of wood
combined with bits of other substances, as
well as of wood alone. And bits of
cardboard may in like manner be built up
piecemeal. We know a young amateur who, in
moments of leisure, has built up a model of
Westminster Abbey with more than ten
thousand little bits of cardboard and wood;
and every boy who has a sixpenny pocket-
knife is familiar with some or other kind of
whittling, connected more or less with some
ingenious scheme or other of wooden patch-
work. There is, however, one recognised art,
in which little bits of metal are interspersed
with bits of wood in such form as to produce
a very pleasant patchwork, applicable to
costly articles of furniture. We are speaking
of buhl- work.

Her Majesty possesses one of the earliest
and finest specimens of buhl-work, in a
writing-table which was exhibited at Gore
House a year or so ago. André Charles Buhl,
or Boule, was a famous manufacturer of
"meubles d'art" during the reign of Louis
the Fourteenth; he held the office of
"tapissier en tître du Roi;" an office which
would seem to have been honorary rather