EMBROIDERING MACHINE. This art has been till of late merely a handi craft employment, cultivated on account of its elegance by ladies of rank. But a few years ago M. Hellmann of Mulhause invented a machine of a most ingenious kind, which enables a female to em broider any design with 80 or 140 nee dles as accurately and expeditiously as she could formerly do with one. A brief account of this remarkable invention will therefore be acceptable to many readers. It was displayed at the national expo sition of the products of industry in Paris for 1884, and was unquestionably the object which stood highest in public esteem ; for whether at rest or in motion, it was always surrounded with a crowd of clarions visitors, admiring the figures which it had formed, or inspecting its movements and investigating its mecha nism. 180 needles were occupied in copying the same pattern with perfect regularity, all set in motion by one person.
Several of these machines are now mounted in France, Germany, and Swit zerland. There exists one factory in Man chester, where a great many of them arc doing beautiful work.
The price of a machine having 180 nee dles, and of consequence 260 pincers or fingers and thumbs to lay hold of them, is 5000 francs, or £200 sterling ; and it is estimated to do daily the work of 15 expert hand embroiderers, employed upon the ordinary frame. It requires merely the labor of one grown-up person, and two assistant children. The operative
must be well taught to use the machine, for he has many things to attend to ; with the one hand he traces out, or rather follows the design with the point of the pentograph ; with the other he turns a handle to plant and pull all the needles, which are seized by pincers and moved along by carriages, approaching to and receding from the web, rolling all the time along an iron railway ; lastly, by means of two pedals upon which he presses alternately with one foot and the other, he opens the 180 pincers of the first carriage, which ought to give up the needles after planting them in the stuff, and he shuts with the same pressure the 130 pincers of the second carriage, which is to receive the needles, to draw them from the other and to bring them back again. The children have nothing else to do than to change the needles when all their threads are used, and to see that no needle misses its pincers. EMERALD. A mineral of a beautiful green color, which occurs in prismatic crystals, and is much valued for orna mental jewelry. The finest are obtain ed from Peru. It consists of 65 silica, 16 alumina, 18 glncina, about 3 oxide of chromium (which is the coloring matter), and a trace of lime. The mines from which the ancients obtained emeralds are said to have existed in Egypt, near Mount Zabarah.