HORN MANUFACTURES. The horns of various animals are employed for useful and ornamental purposes. The principal are those of the ox, buffalo, and two or three species of deer, and of sheep and goats. Horn can be softened and split into thin lathinne, or pressed into molds; and as it recovers its peculiar character of flexibility, toughness, and transparency, when cold, it is particularly adapted for a great variety of purposes. It can also be dyed various colors. Solution of gold in aqua regia d, es it red; solution of nitrate of silver in nitric acid, black; a paste of red lead, made with a solution of potash, colors it brown: so that, with a proper arrangement and application of these materials, the most admirable imitations of the much more costly tortoise shell can be produced. The more common vegetable dye-stuffs, as logwood, Brazil wood, barwood, saffron, indigo, etc., will also color it, but neither so permanently nor so brightly as the metallic materials. By long-continued soaking, the horns of all the animals above mentioned, except the deer, can be softened, and those of the sheep and goat can be easily split into several layers when they have been soaked and boiled; and these layers cannot only be flattened out by putting them between smooth iron plates heated and placed in a press, but if the edges of two or more are brought together between polished copper plates, and these tightly screwed together with a hand-vise, and plunged for some time in boiling water, and then into cold water, the edges will be found firmly welded together, and the same property enables the horn-worker to use up the smallest cuttings with profit. Another valuable property of born is that
when heated it can be pressed into a die, and not only takes a beautifully sharp impres sion, but if left in the'die until cold it retains it. In this way, then, it is employed in snaking handles for umbrellas, knives, forks, etc., even ornamental boxes, and a variety of other articles. Combs are made out of the flattened sheets, and beautiful carvings are made out of the solid parts of the buffalo-horns brought in such vast numbers from the East Indies. Ox-horns, too. are sometimes of fine quality and color, and are fashioned into drinking-cups and other articles, often highly ornamental. Deer-horns, which, strictly speaking, are bone, have a very limited application; they arc employed in this country for nuking knife-handles, called buck-horn, in much favor for pocket knives; but on the continent the horns of the fallow-deer are extensively 114(1 in makink the deer-horn articles of furniture peculiar to Germany. The deer-horns used in Great Britain are chiefly those of the axis (axms maculate), of which at least 100,000 are annu ally imported from the East Indies. From the same country are brought to Britain 800 tons of buffalo-horns, whilst from South America and other parts the importation of ox and cow horns exceeds a million annually.