Volume 5 — From Chambers's Journal Time-Measurers.

There is, perhaps, no subject more interesting to human nature than that of time. Like eternity, it concerns us all; and, unlike it, exacts as well as demands our attention. True, as Sir Walter Scott writes, "it is but a shadowy name, a succession of breathings measured forth by night with the clank of a bell, by day with a shadow crossing along a dial stone;" but we cannot shut our eyes for very long to the fact of its passage. If in our youth we strive to kill it, so all the more in our age do we strive to lengthen its too brief hours out. Even the means by which to note its course have naturally engaged the minds of men in all ages; they have been very diverse and ingenious, and a due record of them cannot fail to contain many curious particulars. Such a work has been recently published in Mr. Wood's Curiosities of Clocks and Watches. Even the diligence of our author, however, does not seem to have discovered at what period the present method of beginning the day at midnight came into use; but it is supposed to have been an ecclesiastical invention. Among the early Romans, the day was divided into twelve hours, from sunrise to sunset, the length of which, therefore, varied with the seasons. The Egyptians, Mexicans, and Persians reckoned the day to begin from sunrise, and divided it into four intervals, determined by the rising and setting of the sun, and its two passages over the meridian. Our own uniform hours of sixty minutes each could scarcely have come into use until something like the wheel-clock was invented: the ancient sun-dial represented hours of a length varying with the seasons, and the clepsydra (or water-clock) was adjusted to furnish hours of fifty to seventy minutes each, to suit the changing lengths of day and night. Clocks, even so late as the reign of James I., were often called horologes; and, up to the fourteenth century, the word clock was applied only to the bell which rang out the hours, or certain periods determined by the sun-dial or sand-glass. To this day, the bell of Wells cathedral is still called the horologe.

The clepsydra is said to have been invented by the censor Scipio Nasica, 595 B.C. The principle of these early time-measurers was a very simple one. "In those of the common kind, the water issued drop by drop through a small hole in the vessel that contained it, and fell into a receiver, in which some light floating body marked the height of the water as it rose, and by these means the time that had elapsed. In a bas-relief of the date of the lower empire, figuring the Hippodrome in Constantinople, a clepsydra, in the shape of an oviform vase, appears. It is very simply mounted, being traversed by an axis, and turned with a crooked handle. By this contrivance, the instantaneous inversion of the vase was secured, and the contents, escaping in a certain definite time, showed the number of minutes which were taken up by each missus, or course. Vitruvius tells us of the construction of a clepsydra which, besides the hours, told the moon's age, the zodiacal sign for the month, and several other things; in fact, it was a regular astronomical clock. His details now read somewhat obscure and complicated; but the principle was that a float, as it moved upward by means of a vertical column fixed in it, drove different sets of cog-wheels, which impelled in their turn other sets, by means of which figures were made to move, obelisks to twirl round, pebbles to be discharged, trumpets to sound, and many other tricks to be put into action. The admission-pipe for the water was made either of gold or a perforated gem, in order that it might not wear away, or be liable to get foul." The floats sometimes communicated with wheels which worked hands on dials, or supported human figures which pointed with hands to certain numbers as the water rose; and in some ingenious water-clocks the fluid flowed as tears from eyes of automata; but all these clepsydrae had two great defects: the one being that the flow varied with the density of the atmosphere; the other, that the water flowed quicker at last than at first. They were, however, put to one excellent use, which has, unhappily, fallen into decay: they were set up in the law-courts to time counsel; "to prevent babbling, that such as spoke ought to be brief in their speeches." For this custom, the world was indebted to the Romans (especially Pompey), and from it Martial is supplied with a pleasant sarcasm: perceiving a dull declaimer moistening his lips with a glass of water, he suggests that it would be a relief to the audience as well as to himself if he would take his liquor from the clepsydra.

With some mechanical additions, the ancient clepsydras were made to do wonderful things besides stopping lawyers' tongues. Haroun-al-Raschid sent (in 807), by two monks of Jerusalem, to the Emperor Charlemagne a brass water-clock, the dial of which was composed of twelve small doors representing the divisions of the hours; each door opened at the hour it was intended to represent, and out of it came the same number of little balls, which fell one by one, at equal distances of time, on a brass drum. It might be told by the eye what hour it was by the number of doors that were open, and by the ear by the number of balls that fell. When it was twelve o'clock, twelve horsemen in miniature issued forth at the same time, and, marching round the dial, shut all the doors.

Hour-glasses, called clepsammia, in which sand took the place of water, were modifications of the clepsydrae. Candle-clocks were used as time-measurers by some, and especially by our own Alfred the Great. "To rightly divide his time, be adopted the following simple expedient: he procured as much wax as weighed seventy-two pennyweights, which he commanded to be made into six candles, each twelve inches in length, with the divisions of inches distinctly marked upon it. These being lighted one after another regularly, burned four hours each, at the rate of an inch for every twenty minutes. Thus the six candles lasted twenty-four hours. The tending of these candle-clocks he confided to one of his domestic chaplains, who constantly from time to time gave him notice of their wasting. But when the winds blew, the air, rushing in through the doors, windows, and crevices of his rude habitation, caused his candles to gutter, and, by fanning the flame, to burn faster. The ingenious king, in order to remedy this serious inconvenience, caused some fine white horn to be scraped so thin as to be transparent, which he let into close frames of wood; and in these primitive lanthorns his wax-clocks burned steadily in all weathers."

The invention of wheel-clocks is attributed by some to Archimedes so early as 200 B.C.; by others to Wallingford so late as the beginning of the fourteenth century; but in the Book of Landaff, describing the life of St. Teilavus, who made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem at the end of the fifth century, it is stated that he returned to Britain with three precious gifts, and among them "a bell greater in fame than in size, and in value than in beauty. It convicts the perjured, and cures the infirm; and what seems still more wonderful is, that it did sound every hour without being touched, until it was prevented by the sin of men, who rashly handled it with polluted hands, and it ceased from so delightful an office." They looked their gift-clock in the mouth, and probably disturbed the works.

St. Paul's had a clock of some sort at a very early period; in the year 1286, allowances to "Bartholomo Orologiario" (the clock-keeper) being entered, in its accounts, of so much bread and beer. Iron and steel were used for the wheels and frames until the end of the sixteenth century, and blacksmiths were the chief clock-makers. Chaucer, who died in 1400, remarks of a punctual cock of his acquaintance:

which might probably have been truthfully said of many a less punctual bird; for, to judge by the old parish account-books, these blacksmiths' clocks were not good goers, and were for ever being rectified. That of St. Alban's abbey, however, was an exception. It was constructed at a great cost by Richard de Wallingford, son of a blacksmith in the town in question, but afterward made abbot for his learning (1330), and his clock was "going" in Henry VIII.'s reign. It noted the course of the sun and moon, the rising and setting of the planets and fixed stars, and the ebb and flow of the tide. When the good abbot felt his end drawing nigh, his thoughts being fixed on time as well as eternity, he left a book of directions for keeping this piece of mechanism in order.

For ingenuity and complication, however, all ancient clocks must hide their dials in the presence of that of Strasburg cathedral. "Before this clock stands a globe on the ground, showing the motions of the heavens, stars, and planets. The heavens are carried about by the first mover in twenty-four hours. Saturn, by it proper motion, is carried about in thirty years; Jupiter, in twelve; Mars, in two; the Sun, Mercury, and Venus, in one year; and the moon in one month. In the clock itself are two tables on the right and left hand, showing the eclipses of the sun and moon for the year 1573 to 1624. The third table in the middle is divided into two parts. In the first part, the statues of Apollo and Diana show the course of the year and the day thereof, being carried about one year. The second part shows the year of our Lord, and the equinoctial days, the hours of each day, and the minutes of each hour, Easter-day, and all the other feasts, and the dominical letter; and the third part hath the geographical description of all Germany, and particularly of Strasburg, and the names of the inventor and the workmen. In the middle frame of the clock is an astrolabe, showing the sign in which each planet is every day; and there are statues of the seven planets upon a circular plate of iron; so that every day the planet that rules the day comes forth, the rest being hid within the frames, till they come out, of course, at their day, as the sun upon Sunday, and so for all the week. There is a terrestrial globe, which shows the quarter, the half hour, and the minutes. There is a figure of a human skull, and statues of two boys, whereof one turns the hour-glass when the clock has struck, and the other puts forth the rod in his hand at each stroke of the clock. Moreover, there are statues of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, and many observation of the moon. In the upper part of the clock are four old men's statues, which strike the quarters of the hour. The statue of death comes out at each quarter to strike, but is driven back by the statue of Christ, with a spear in his hand, for three quarters; but in the fourth quarter death strikes the hour with the bone in his hand, and then the chimes sound. On the top of the clock is the image of a cock, which twice in a day crows aloud and claps his wings. Besides, this clock is decked with many rare pictures, and, being on the inside of the church, carries another frame to the outside of the walls, whereon the hours of the sun, the courses of the moon, the length of the day, and such other things are set out with much art." But perhaps the most striking part of the history of this famous Strasburg clock was that it was made, or, at all events, perfected, by a blind man. The artisan who contrived it lost his sight, and was superseded; but since nobody else would carry out his ideas, and he refused to communicate them, he was reinstated in his work, and actually carried out the affair, in all its intricate delicacy, to the end. There are several other examples of blind clockmakers, and even watchmakers. "The Illustrated London News of August 23, 1851, tells us that there was then living at Holbeach, Lincolnshire, a watchmaker named Rippin, who was completely blind. He was a first-rate hand at his business, and it was truly surprising to observe with what ease he could take to pieces and place together again watches of the most delicate mechanism. Some years previously, Rippin was robbed, and the property taken from him consisted of watch-wheels, hair springs, and other tiny things belonging to the trade. The thief was traced, and convicted at Spalding sessions, the blind man having sworn to his property by feeling."

Those who are accustomed only to eight-day clocks will be astonished to learn that some time-pieces have been made to go for a hundred years! The Marquis of Bute had one at Luton Park; and "in Sir John Moore's account of his 'large sphere-going clock-work' (Mathem. Compend.) we read that it made a revolution of once in seventeen thousand one hundred years, by means of six wheels and five pinions, for the sun's apogeum." Instead of "it made," one should surely here read "it was made to make," since the oldest inhabitant could scarcely certify to the fact having been performed. In 1859, after years of labor, James White, of Wickham Market, completed a self-winding clock, which determined the time with unfailing accuracy, continuing a constant motion by itself, never requiring to be wound up, and being capable of perpetuating its movements so long as its component parts should exist.

Italy boasts of some curious native clockwork. Early in the last century, at the Palazzo di Colonna at Rome, was a portable clock, which was wound up only once a year, and showed the hour of the day, the month, and the year; and the popes possessed for two centuries a horological marvel, which, passing through the hands of King William I. of the Netherlands, was exhibited to our Royal Society so late as 1848. This was produced solely by manual labor, without any other help than the bench of the turner and the file; yet it shows the date of the month and all the Catholic feasts and holidays throughout the year. Seven heathen gods make their appearance, each on his proper week-day, exactly in front, and is relieved, after twenty-four hours' duty, by the next. "In the centre of the second division (the clock being a tower of three stories) is an image of the Virgin, holding her son Jesus in her arms; two angels are seen placing crowns and garlands on her head; and during the performance of the bells, several angels appear making their obeisance before the image of Mary and the Saviour. Within the centre of the third division is a metal bell hanging on a gilt plate of copper, on which is represented the judgment-day. Round this metal plate move four silver figures, set in motion by mechanism, representing the four states of social life. These images point out the quarters of the hour by striking the bell; the first quarter is represented by a youth, the second by a grave citizen, the third by a Roman soldier, and the fourth by a priest. In the fourth division is likewise a metal bell, on the sides of which are chambers; on the left side is the representation of death, proclaiming the hours of day and night by striking the bell; above it is seen a Latin inscription, from Romans, chapter vii. verse 23. At the right side is the image of the Saviour, stepping forward, with the globe in his hand, and above it the cross. This figure proceeds every two minutes in a slow manner, and then, for a moment, hides itself from view; above it is a Latin verse from the prophet Hosea, chapter xiii. These two figures are of massive silver. Behind the bell is inscribed the name of the artist, and the date 1589." Many ancient clocks upon the continent exhibit processions of saints and various other religious automata; but the most singular of all, perhaps, is one in the cathedral of St. John at Lyon. On the top of it stands a cock, that every three hours claps his wings and crows thrice. In a gallery underneath, a door opens on one side, and out comes the Virgin Mary; and from a door on the other side the angel Gabriel, who meets and salutes her. At the same time a door opens in the alcove part, out of which the form of a dove, representing the Holy Ghost, descends upon the Virgin's head. After this, these figures retire, and from a door in the middle comes forth the figure of a reverend father, lifting up his hand and giving his benediction to the spectators. The days of the week are represented by seven figures, each of which takes its place in a niche on the morning of the day that it represents, and continues there until midnight. The greatest curiosity is an oval plate marked with the minutes of an hour, which are exactly pointed out by a hand reaching the circumference, that insensibly dilates and contracts itself during the revolution. This curious machine, although not so perfect now in all its movements as when it was originally constructed, has suffered but little injury during a long course of years, owing to the care and skill of those who were appointed to look after it. It appears from an inscription on the clock itself that it was repaired and improved by one Morrison in 1661; but it was contrived long before that time by Nicholas Lipp, a native of Basle, who finished it in 1598, when he was about thirty years of age. The oval minute motion was invented by M. Servier, and is of later date. There is a tradition that the ingenious artist, Lipp, had his eyes put out by order of the magistrates of Lyon, that he might not be able to make another clock like this; but so far from this being true, the justices of Lyon engaged him to take care of his own machine, at a handsome salary.

Ingenious, however, as are the quasi-religious automata above mentioned, how inferior are they in human interest when compared with the time-piece possessed by Mrs. Forester at Great Brickhill, Bucks, "the identical clock which was at Whitehall at the time of the execution of Charles I., and by which the fatal moment was regulated." At that period (the seventeenth century), there was a great taste for striking-clocks. "Several of them, made by Thomas Tompion, who invented many useful things in clock-work, not only struck the quarters on eight bells, but also the hour after each quarter. At twelve o'clock, forty-four blows were struck, and one hundred and thirteen between twelve and one o'clock. Failures in the striking mechanism of these clocks were attended with much annoyance to the owners of them, for they would go on striking without cessation until the weight or spring had gone down, and they were frequently contrived to go for a month.

In 1696, a very remarkable clock was made for "Le Grand Monarque," whom science as well as literature, it seems, delighted to flatter. Louis was therein represented upon his throne, surrounded by the electors of the German states and the princes of Italy, who advanced toward him doing homage, and retired chiming the quarters of the hours with their canes. The kings of Europe did the same, except that they struck the hours instead of the quarters. The maker, Burdeau, advertised his intention of exhibiting this work of art in public, and knowing the stubborn resistance offered to his sovereign by William III., be determined to make the English monarch's effigy particularly pliant, so that when its turn came he should show an especial humility. "William, thus compelled, bowed very low indeed; but, at the same moment, some part of the machinery snapped asunder, and threw 'Le Grand Monarque' prostrate from his chair at the feet of the British king. The news of the accident spread in every direction as an omen; the king was informed of it, and poor Burdeau was confined in the Bastille."

Clock-omens, it seems, have not been confined to the work of this unfortunate Frenchman, "A correspondent of Notes and Queries" for March 28, 1861, relates the following account of a curious omen or coincidence: 'On Wednesday night, or rather Thursday morning, at three o'clock, the inhabitants of the metropolis were roused by repeated strokes of the new great bell at Westminster, and most persons supposed it was for a death in the royal family. There might have been about twenty slow strokes when it ceased. It proved, however, to be due to some derangement of the clock, for at four and five o'clock, ten or twelve strokes were struck instead of the proper number. On mentioning this in the morning to a friend who is deep in London antiquities, he observed that there is an opinion in the city that anything the matter with St. Paul's great bell is an omen of ill to the royal family; and he added: "I hope the opinion will not extend to the Westminster bell." This was at eleven on Friday morning. I see by the Times this morning, that it was not till 1 A.M. the lamented Duchess of Kent was considered in the least danger, and, as you are aware, she expired in less than twenty-four hours. ... I am told the same notion obtains at Windsor.'"

A century after Burdeau's masterpiece, a much more useful work, and one perhaps equally characteristic of the nationality of its maker, was executed for George III. by Alexander Cumming, of Edinburgh, which registered the height of the barometer. "This was effected by a circular card, of about two feet in diameter, being made to turn once in a year, the card was divided by radii lines into three hundred and sixty-five divisions, the months and days being marked round the edge, while the usual range of the barometer was indicated in inches and tenths by circular lines described from the centre. A pencil, with a fine point pressed on the card by a spring, and held by an upright rod floating on the mercury, accurately marked the state of the barometer; the card, being carried forward by the clock, brought each day to the pencil. It was not even necessary to change the card at the year's end, as a pencil with a different-colored lead would make a distinction between two years. This barometer-clock cost nearly two thousand pounds, and the maker was allowed a salary of two hundred pounds per annum to keep it in repair."

Taking leave of these ingenious complications, we may say indeed that in nothing has "man sought out many inventions," or exhibited his diligence and patience, more than in the science of clockmaking. Earth, air, fire, and water have been pressed into his service for his purpose; the sand or earth clock being worked like the water-clock; the air-clock consisting in the pumping of a bellows, like those of an organ, the gradual escape of the air regulating the descent of a weight, which carried round the wheels; and the fire-clock being formed upon the principle of the smoke-jack, the "wheels being moved by means of a lamp, which also gave light to the dial; this clock was made to announce the several hours by placing at each a corresponding number of crackers, which were exploded at proper times." This very alarming time-piece was outdone by a cannon-clock placed in 1832 in the gardens of the Palais-Royal. "A burning-glass was fixed over the vent of a cannon, so that the sun's rays at the moment of its passing the meridian were contracted by the glass on the priming, and the piece was fired; the burning-glass being regulated for this purpose every month." At Greenwich Observatory there is a most ingenious wind-clock, which, however, is not a time-measurer, but registers for itself, with pencil and paper, the wayward action of the wind. "Each minute and each hour has its written record, without human help or inspection. Once a day only, an assistant comes to put a new blank sheet in the place of that which has been covered by the moving pencils, and the latter is taken away to be bound up in a volume. This book might with truth be lettered, The History of the Wind; written by Itself: an AEolian Autobiography."

The well-known and simple piece of mechanism called a cuckoo-clock has been the cause of some spiritual mischief. An assortment of them was taken by certain missionaries to the Friendly Islands, the inhabitants of which resolutely refused to attribute them to science; they believed that each contained a spirit, which would detect a thief if anything were stolen from their English visitors. When a native was sick, a cuckoo-clock was always sent for, as being "great medicine." Unfortunately, however, one of the clocks got out of order, and since the missionaries did not understand how to set it right, they fell into contempt, and lost their usefulness.

The two most curious examples of clock-work—apart from intricacy—to which Mr. Wood has introduced us are the clock-lock and the clock-bed. The former, made by a locksmith of Frankfort in 1859, consisted of a strong box without any keyhole at all, and which even its owner could not open. Inside was a clock-work, the hand of which, when the box was open, the owner placed at the hour and minute when he again wanted to have access to the interior of the box. The works began to move as soon as the lid was shut, and time alone was the key. The clock-bed was the invention of a Bohemian in 1858, and was so constructed that a pressure upon it caused a soft and gentle air of Auber's to be played, which continued long enough to lull to sleep the most wakeful. At the head was a clock, the hand of which being placed at the hour that the sleeper wished to rise, when the time arrived the bed played a march of Spontoni's (spontaneously) with drums and cymbals, enough to rouse the Seven Sleepers.

The great time-piece of Westminster, which receives Greenwich time by electricity, exhibits no sensible error in less than a month. Mr. Airy's last report upon its rate was that the first blow of the hour may be relied on within less than one second a week; which is a seven times greater accuracy than was required in the original conditions under which the clock was built.

A proportionate part of Mr. Wood's interesting volume is devoted to the smaller subject of watches. The invention of the coiled spring as a motive power instead of the weight used in clocks seems to have taken place in 1477, at Nuremberg, where watches were first made, and called, from their oval shape, Nuremberg eggs. In 1530. we find Charles V., in his retirement at the monastery of St. Yuste, amusing himself with "portable clocks;" reflecting: "How foolish I was to have squandered so much blood and treasure to make men think alike, when I can't even make a few watches keep uniform time;" and good naturedly observing, when a monk overthrew them all: "I have been laboring for some time to make these watches go together, and now you have effected it in one instant." This emperor possessed one watch that was made "in the jewel or collet of his ring," so that diminutiveness of construction must have been rapidly attained. George III., however, had a repeating watch presented to him (by Arnold of Devereux Court, in the Strand) whose size did not exceed that of a silver twopenny-piece. "It contained one hundred and twenty different parts, but altogether weighed not more than five pennyweights, seven grains and three-fourths. ... For this delicate and exquisite specimen of his art, Arnold had to make nearly all the tools used in its manufacture. This tiny watch contained the first ruby cylinder ever made, The king presented Arnold with five hundred guineas; and when the Emperor of Russia offered a thousand guineas for a similar one, the watchmaker refused to make it lest he should depreciate the value of his gift."

Sir John Dick Lauder possesses a skull-watch that belonged to Mary Queen of Scots; this is of silver gilt, and ornamented with representations of death between the palace and the cottage; the garden of Eden, and the crucifixion; the holy family at Bethlehem, etc. The works are as brains in the skull, the hollow of which is filled by a silver bell; the dial-plate being on a flat upon the roof of the mouth. With reference to this ghastly subject, Mr. Wood relates that, in a French engraving of 1830, death enters a watchmaker's shop, and shows his hour-glass to the master, saying: "Vais-je bien?" to which the latter answers: "Vous avancez horriblement." Many persons addicted to the science of watchmaking seem, indeed, to have been on unusually familiar terms with the king of terrors; and some have left epitaphs behind them of a very characteristic nature. In the churchyard of Lydford, in Devonshire, is to be read the following:

Of course, watches could not be made to imitate the feats of the Strasburg clock; but in the Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg there is a watch which was made by a Russian peasant, named Kulubin, in the reign of Catharine II., which is sufficiently wonderful. It is about the size of an egg, and contains a representation of the tomb of Christ, with the Roman sentinels. On pressing a spring, the stone is rolled from the tomb, the sentinels fall down, the angels appear, the holy women enter the sepulchre, and the same chant which is sung in the Greek Church on Easter eve is accurately performed.

The most costly and elaborate watch ever produced by British workmen, up to 1844, was made in that year by Hart & Son of Cornhill, for the Sultan Abdul Medschid; the brilliancy of its colors and exquisiteness of its pencilling seem to have surpassed anything of the kind of foreign manufacture. It struck the hours and quarters by itself, and repeated them with the minutes upon pressing a small gold slide; and the sound, produced by wires instead of a bell, resembled that of a powerful and harmonious cathedral clock. Its price was one thousand two hundred guineas.

The most accurately exact watch is probably Mr. Benson's Chronograph, used for timing the Derby. "It consists of an ordinary quick train lever movement, on a scale sufficiently large to carry the hands for an eight-inch dial, and with the addition of a long seconds-hand, which traverses the dial, instead of being, as usual, just above the figure VI. The peculiarity of the chronograph consists in this seconds-hand and the mechanism connected with it. The hand itself is double, or formed of two distinct hands, one lying over the other. The lower one, at its extreme end, is furnished with a small cup or reservoir, with a minute orifice at the bottom. The corresponding extremity of the upper hand is bent over so as to rest exactly over this puncture, and the reservoir having been filled with ink of a thickness between ordinary writing fluid and printer's ink, the chronograph is ready for action. The operator, who holds tightly grasped in his hand a stout string connected with the mechanism peculiar to this instrument, keeps a steady lookout for the fall of the starter's flag. Simultaneously, therefore, with the start of the race, the string he holds is pulled by him, and at the same moment the upper hand dips down through the reservoir in the lower, and leaves a little dot or speck of ink upon the dial. This is repeated as the horses pass the winning-post, so that a lasting and indisputable record is afforded by the dots on the dial of the time—exact to the tenth of a second—which is occupied in running the race. As an example of the results of this instrument's operations, we may add that it timed the start and arrival of the Derby race in 1866 as follows: Start, 3 hours 34 min, 0 sec,; arrival, 3 hours 36 min. 49 sec.; duration of race, 2 min. 49 sec."

To give an idea of the extraordinary division of labor in this delicate science, it was stated in evidence before a committee of the House of Commons, that there are one hundred and two distinct branches of the art of watchmaking, and that the watch finisher, whose duty it is to put together the scattered parts, is the only one of the hundred and two persons who can work in any other department than his own. The hair-spring gives a very curious proof of the value that can be given to a small piece of steel by manual labor. Four thousand hair-springs scarcely weigh more than a single ounce, but often cost more than a thousand pounds. "The pendulum-spring of a watch, which governs the vibrations of the balance, costs, at the retail price, two-pence, and weighs three-twentieths of a grain; while the retail price of a pound of the best iron, the raw material out of which fifty thousand such springs are made, is the same sum of two-pence." Mr. Bennett—whose advocacy of female labor in the watch-trade has rendered him obnoxious to some persons—states that he found at Neufchâtel, where the Swiss watches are chiefly made, twenty thousand women employed upon the more delicate parts of the watch-movement.

The last part of this very interesting volume is devoted to that perfection of timekeepers, the chronometer, by which is found the longitude of a ship at sea. Twenty thousand pounds was offered by the British government for the invention of this instrument, which was awarded to John Harrison in 1765. His chronometer, in the first instance, was discredited on a voyage to Jamaica, since it differed with the chart by a degree and a half, but it was eventually discovered that it was the chart that was wrong. Of how accurately chronometers are made, there are numberless instances; here is one with which we must conclude. "After several months spent at sea," writes Dr. Arnott, "in a long passage from South America to Asia, my pocket-chronometer, and others on board, announced one morning that a certain point of land was then bearing north from the ship, at a distance of fifty miles. In an hour afterward, when a mist had cleared away, the looker-out on the mast gave the joyous call of 'Land ahead!' verifying the reports of the chronometers almost to one mile, after a voyage of thousands of miles. It is allowable at such a moment, with the dangers and uncertainties of ancient navigation before the mind, to exult in contemplating what man has now achieved. Had the rate of the wonderful little instrument in an that time quickened or slackened ever so slightly, its announcement would have been useless, or even worse; but in the night and in the day, in storm and in calm, in heat and in cold, its steady beat went on, keeping exact account of the rolling of the earth and stars; and in the midst of the trackless waves, which retain no mark, it was always ready to tell its magic tale, indicating the very spot on the globe over which it had arrived."

Among the relics of the Franklin expedition brought home from the arctic regions by M'Clintock was a pocket-chronometer in excellent preservation; it had stopped at four o'clock. The owner probably had done with time ere that.