of such wares used to be made in Birmingham in the course of a month. Comparatively few are made now. Yet we are not exactly "buttonless black-guards," as Cobbett--at least, I think it was Cobbett--once disrespectfully called the Quakers, and buttons of various kinds other than pearl and brass are turned out in barrow loads. I remember some years ago going over the button factory of Messrs. Dain, Watts, and Manton, an old-established business now carried on by Mr. J.S. Manton, and was then shown a curious composition or kind of paste that could be made into buttons useful for all sorts of purposes. On my asking what the "button dough" was made of, Mr. Manton, I remember, gave me the comprehensive reply, "anything." All sorts of stuff having any substance in it was indeed thrown into a kind of mortar, ground up, mixed with something that gave the mass cohesion and plasticity, then moulded into buttons as clay is moulded by the potter, and burned, dried, and hardened. Therefore, if brass and pearl buttons are in limited demand, there are other materials from which a new useful and cheap article can be made--the "very button" for the time--and this is produced in much larger quantities than the more costly articles of a few generations ago. In spite, then, of changes in fashion, Birmingham is still--I will not say a button hole, but a city where billions of buttons are made. Witness, for instance, the turn-out of such a manufactory as that of Thomas Carlyle, Limited. Here is a great and extended concern grafted upon an old-established business, and which at the present time gives employment, regularly, to over 1,000 hands. Buttons are made to go to all people, save the rude and nude races, and a few odd millions produced for home use. And speaking of all this reminds me how in the days of my boyhood I sometimes saw a queer character known as "Billy Button." He was a sight to behold, for he was decorated with buttons, mostly brass, from top to toe, and presented a sight that was enough to make a thoroughbred quaker swoon. Birmingham, as I have remarked, is sufficiently enterprising not to let opportunities slip through its fingers. Its trades are still increasing, and increasing in number and variety, and though there is a tendency in some of the big industries that do a large foreign trade to get nearer to the sea-board, there are those who are sanguine enough to believe that the number of our works and our workpeople will increase and multiply till the large supplies of water that are to be conducted to us from Mid-Wales will be none too copious for the great unwashed and other inhabitants of our city a few years hence. Referring again to outsiders and their ideas of Birmingham trades, when visitors--distinguished or otherwise--come to see our factories there are two that they generally begin and often end with--namely, Mr. Joseph Gillott's pen manufactory and the electro-plate works of Messrs. Elkington. Of late years the Birmingham Small Arms establishment at Small Heath has gained attention and made a good third to our show industries.