TOULOUSE. The industrial products of this important French city are of greatvariety, including coarse woollen cloth, blankets, silk goods, gauze, starch, straw-hats, vermicelli, wax candles, musical strings, card and room paper, pottery, scythes, steel, and hardware; it has a large porcelain manufactory, cotton yarn mills, dye-houses, several printing offices, brandy distilleries, copper and iron foundries, tan•yards, cannon foundry, powder-mill, and a tobacco factory. The city is the entrepOt for the iron of Ariege, and has considerable com merce with Spain, Bordeaux, and Marseille. The business done in wheat and flour is very t important, causing a circulation of above half I a million sterling annually ; the commerce in wine and brandy too is very considerable ; other articles of trade are colonial produce, 3 oil, soap, salt geese, Spanish wool, broadcloth, - hardware, and feathers.
r TOY MANUFACTURE. The manufacture 3 of childrens' toys is a remarkable one, which - occupies a larger number of persons than L would generally be supposed. In one of the excellent papers which have recently appeared in the Morning Chronicle, it is well ob ; served :—" The sciences which are laid under i contribution in the construction of toys are , almost as multifarious as the arts which are I employed in the manufacture of them. Optics gives its burning-glass, its microscope, its magic lantern, its stereoscope, thauma trope, its and a variety of others; electricity, its Leyden jars, galvanic batteries, electrotypes, Fn. ; chemistry, its balloons, fireworks and crackers ; mechanics, its clockwork mice—its steam and other carriages ; pneumatics contributes its kites and windmills; acoustics, its Jew-harps, mu sical-glasses, accordions, and all the long train of musical instruments ; astronomy lends its orreries ; in fine, there is scarcely a branch of knowledge which is not made to pay tribute to the amusement of the young. Nor are the arts and artists that are called into play in the manufacture of toys less numerous. There is the turner, to turn the handles of the skipping-ropes, the ninepins, the peg, the humming, and the whipping tops, the hoop sticks ; the basket -worker, to make dolls' cradles, and babies' rattles, and wicker-work carts and carriages; the tinman, to manufac ture tin swords and shields,pea-shooters, carts, money-boxes, and miniature candlesticks ; and the pewterer to cast the metal soldiers, and dolls' cups and saucers, and fire-irons, and knives and forks, plates and dishes, chairs and tables, and all the leading furniture of the baby-house ; the modeller, to make the skin and composition animals ; the glass blower, to make the dolls' eyes ; the wig maker, to manufacture the dolls' curls ; the tallow-chandler, to mould miniature candles for the dolls' houses ; the potter, to produce dolls' cups and saucers. Then there are
image-men, conjurors, cutlers, card-makers, opticians, cabinet-makers, firework-makers, and, indeed, almost every description of artisan —for there is scarcely a species of mann facture or handicraft that does not contribute something to the amusement of the young." Considerable imports of foreign toys are made yearly. These are chiefly from France, Germany, and Switzerland. The clock-work and mechanical toys are chiefly from France, where they are better made than in any other country. Box-toys, as they are called, that is, numerous little turned or carved toys sold in boxes, are chiefly from Germany—such as Noah's arks, troops of soldiers, tea-sets, farm yards, boxes of skittles, &c. Niirriberg, Frank fort, and the Black Forest, are the principal places in Germany where these toys are made. Women and children make them in the country districts, and take them for sale to the exporting merchants. Low as such labour may be considered to be remunerated in England, the earnings are very much lower in Germany; and it is on this account that such articles can pay the expense of transport from country to country. The Swiss toys are mostly in white wood, and comprise such articles as carved figures and Swiss cottages; they also include the jointed figures used by artists. Tho conjuring tricks, dissecting puz zles, skeleton maps, &c., are mostly English.
Among the English toy makers the variety is considerable. There are the toy turner, the green wood toy maker, the white wood fry maker, the fancy toy maker, the numerous ramifications of doll makers, the tin toy maker, the lead toy maker, the pewter toy maker, the basket toy maker, the firework maker, the kite maker, the drum and"tam eourine maker, and others which it would not be easy to range under any particular class. Far more women and children than men are employed in these trades.
A little has been said on one of these toy departments in a former article. [Dona MANUFACTURE.]