“A large beam was erected across the factory, to which were affixed as many seats--in the form of large wooden scales--as there were men employed, who were fastened in them by means of a girdle round their bodies. The artificers were employed near each other, while between them stood a piece of iron pierced with holes of different dimensions, for reducing the wire to an appropriate size. The worked iron was heated; the beam was put in motion by a water-wheel; and as the workmen swung backwards and forwards, they passed and repassed the iron through the holes described with forceps, until it was reduced by force to the required diameter. The motion was regulated; and if any workman chanced to miss seizing the iron with his forceps, he suffered a considerable shock on the return of the beam.”
On the introduction of the improved system of wire factories, the nature of the contracts between the principals and their workmen underwent a necessary change. The struggle, however, was continued for some time, but ultimately subsided in the adoption of the present plan, and the alterations which it introduced. Under the management of the late Mr. Thompson--whose mausoleum forms a conspicuous object in the adjoining cemetery--the Tinterne Wire Works acquired a new impetus, which has been successfully kept up by his able and intelligent successor.
<g>Natural History.</g>--On this interesting subject, we take advantage of the following notes from the journal of the late Mr. Thomas of Tinterne:--April 2d, half-past seven A.M. Notwithstanding a cold north-easterly wind, with fugitive showers, I saw a nightingale, for the first time this year, on the road to Chapel Hill, perched upon the topmost branch of a budding thorn. He uttered one or two of those rich, cheerful, metallic notes, so characteristic of his song; and quickly returned to his busy search for food amongst the low bushes adjoining. One of my friends informed me that he had listened to its music the evening before; and another averred that he had heard the nightingale as early as the second week of March. If these accounts be true, which I have not the slightest reason to doubt, they seem to favour the idea that some of these lovely songsters hibernate amongst us. Naturalists, by common consent, name the last week of April as the period of their ordinary arrival in this island. It seems probable, however, that those which winter amongst us undergo some variation of plumage, which may lead a cursory observer--if he did not pass them by unnoticed--to confound them with the female redbreast, the hedge-sparrow, or some other unpretending bird.