are collected into knots or tufts; they are
brought even and regular at one end; they
are dipped into melted pitch, and a piece of
twine is bound round them; the knot thus
made is again dipped in melted pitch, and is
inserted in its appropriate hole with a kind
of screwing motion which ensures its stability.
If the product be of the broom genus, the
bristles are left of their full length; but if it
be a brush requiring harder material, the
bristles are cut at the outer or flag end.

But these common, humble, cheap, inferior,
working-day brooms and brushes are not to
be named on the same day with another kind
made by draw-work instead of pull-work (to
use another workshop phrase). Most of the
stiff and sharp-haired family such as scrubbing-
brushes, shoe-brushes, clothes-brushes,
tooth-brushes, nail-brushes, hair-brushes,
flesh-brushes, and so forth, are examples of
draw-work. The stock of the brush is bored
with holes to such a depth as the bristles are
required to reach; and a smaller hole is then
bored through the remaining thickness of the
wood in a line with the centre of each large
hole. The cunning workmen then draws a
little bunch of bristles into each hole, doubled
into a bight, round a piece of wire, which he
works through the small hole; he passes the
same piece of wire from hole to hole, drawing
a doubled tuft in at every movement, so that
the tufts may be said to be all threaded upon
one wire. The exposed ends of all the bristles
are then cut square and even. But the wires
form a sort of lattice-work at the back, which
would hurt the hand of the user. Hence a sort
of veneering: the wired back of the brush is
covered with a thin veneer of wood, which
may be made a means of adornment. In
tooth-brushes, where the back presents too narrow a
surface for veneering, the wire is sunk in
grooves below the general level of the
surface; and in some kinds of delicate work,
called trepaning, the wires act through the
sides of the brush, by means of holes, which
are afterwards plugged up. Some brushes
have nearly a thousand holes drilled in them,
each of which requires to have its tuft of
bristles drawn in.

Bristles unquestionably exert a more sweeping
influence in domestic economy than any
other material for brushes and brooms; but
they are not quite alone in their glory. There
are the hairs of the camel, marten, sable, and
other animals, before noticed, as being
rendered available to the artist. There are horse-
hair, goats'-hair, used for hat-brushes. There
are fibres of whalebone used for brushes
of more than usual hardness. There are fibres
of the hard and tough dark-coloured vegetable
substance called bass, for stable brooms and
other coarse purposes. There is the well-
known birch-broom, of ancient renown. There
is the light-coloured wisk, or whisk, furnishing
a useful material for carpet-brooms. There is
the coire, or cocoa-nut fibre, which, whether
made into brooms, brushes, mats, matting,
rugs, druggets, caulking, or stuffing, has a very
high character given to it for indestructibility.
This coire is the fibrous envelope of the cocoa-
nut; the rind is forced from the shell by
means of a sharp spike; it is soaked in water
for several months, and then beaten and
rubbed, and the fibre at length separates from
the kind of bark to which it is attached.

Our old acquaintances, the Trichosaron, the
Sine Manubrium, and the Brosse Mécanique
pour les Parquets, are not the only notable
achievements in brush-making. There is a
patent method of fixing the tufts in dove-
tailed grooves, to obviate the necessity for
draw-work. There are the patented brushes,
with flexible backs, in which the tufts are
attached to pieces of leather. There are
brushes with conical holes to receive the tufts;
brushes made of spun-glass for using with
corrosive acids; brushes made of a covering
of plush on a foundation of white flock, for
certain delicate uses. Whether the brush-
makers of the present day know the name of the
Reverend Gilbert White, we cannot say; but
the author of the Natural History of Selborne
once told the housewives of England that very
useful brooms can be made of the stalks
of the Polytricum commune, or giant golden
maiden-hair; that when this moss-like substance
is well combed and dressed, and divested of
its outer skin, it becomes of a beautiful bright
chesnut colour; and that, being soft and pliant,
it is likely to be useful for the dusting of beds,
curtains, carpets, hangings, and the like.

             A TOUR IN BOHEMIA.

I HAVE travelled in Bohemia, and have
been of it: a Bohemian. I know its ways
and means, its larger iniquities and lesser
foibles; and I am here to tell what I know
of it, truly.

Amid a redundant population and a
plethoric civilisation, the Bohemian Republic
has gradually grown up to be a power,
patent though unrecognised, sensible though
scarcely visible, influential though despised.
The Bohemian interest is representable, and
has its representatives, now-a-days, just as
the manufacturing interest, the shipping
interest, the landed interest, and the
religious interest have their representatives; and
though there be no honourable member for
Bohemia returned to the House of Commons,
there are a good many honourable members
in Bohemia and of Bohemia, who are
Bohemian altogether in feelings, in
circumstances, and in connections.

The Bohemians I tell of are the gipsies of
civilisation. Their skins may be fair, their
eyes blue, their skill in telling fortunes, in horse-
couping and horse-chanting, and in speaking
the Rommaney language may be limited; they
may prefer the shelter of a tiled roof to that of
a blanket tent, and be perfectly free from
surreptitious predilections for linen on hedges
and the poultry of their neighbours; but