CHAPTER XXI.

WOOD-WORKING.

Contrast of Prehistoric Labour and Implements and Modern Tools.--The Ages of Stone, Bronze, Iron, and the Age of Wood.--The Slow Growth of Wood-working Inventions.--Tools of the Egyptians.--Saw of the Greeks.--Known to Hindoos and Africans.--Accounts of Pliny and Ansonius as to Planes and Marble Sawing.--Saw-mills of France, Germany, Norway, Sweden.--Holland 100 Years ahead of England, and Why.--William Penn Found Saw-mills in America in 1682.--What made Americans Inventors.--Progress Unknown where Saw-mills are not.--Steam and Saw Mills.--Splendid System and Inventions of Samuel Bentham, Bramah and Branch at Close of Eighteenth Century.-- First Decade of Nineteenth Century Produces Wonderful Inventor, Thomas Blanchard.--His Life and Inventions.--Machines for Turning Irregular Forms in Wood and Metal.--The Boring Worm and Boring Machine.--Gun-making and Mortising Machines.-- Complicated Ornamental Wood-cutting and Carving Machines.-- Whatever Made by Hand can be Better Made by Machinery.-- Pattern-Cutting Machines.--Xyloplasty.--Art of Hand Carving Revived.--Bending of Wood by Fire and Steam.--The Problems Solved by Wood-working Inventors.--Great Saws at the Vienna Exposition, 1873.--Boring Tools, Augers, Planes, Lathes, etc. How Improved and by Whom.--“The Universal Wood Workers.”-- Flexible Shafting.--Shingles and Tiles.--A Great Log, how Turned into Bundles of Shingles.--Veneering.--What Pliny Thought of It.--Brunel’s Machines, 1805-1808.--Homes Made Beautiful by Modern Wood-working.--Objects without and Within a House, Made by Such Machinery.--Array of Wood-working Machinery at International Expositions.--The Art of Forestry. 339