industries. Visitors to Messrs. Elkington's are, of course, largely attracted by the artistic contents and triumphs of the famous Newhall Street show rooms. The name of the Elkington firm has a world-wide fame, and their splendid artistic achievements may almost be said to be epoch-making in the way of combining utility with beautiful design to the highest degree. Those, however, who fancy that Messrs. Elkington's great and extending manufactory is kept going by designing and producing splendid vases, shields, cups, and sumptuous gold and silver services, are, of course, hugely mistaken. The ordinary spoons, forks, &c., that are to be seen--I won't say on every table, but on the tables of millions of people, are the staple productions of such firms as that of which I speak. Indeed, if I could probe into the secret chambers of Messrs. Elkington's back safe, I should probably find that the production of those exquisite artistic articles of theirs has not been the department of their business that has brought the greatest grist to the mill and made a commercial success of their trade. Those visitors to Elkington's who penetrate beyond the show rooms will find much to interest, and in some cases to mystify them. Electro-plating is indeed almost a magical sort of craft. How it is that dirty looking metal spoons can be put into a dirty looking bath and come out white and silvered must amaze and bewilder many strange eyes. Impassive as Asiatics can be, I should much like for once just to watch the eyes of an eastern conjuror and magician when he saw the electro bath trick, and especially when done in the way and on the scale that may be witnessed at the Birmingham Newhall Street works. With regard to Mr. Joseph Gillott's pen manufactory it is a very interesting show place, but is practical and prosaic compared with the art electro-plate establishment I have just now referred to. Those, however, who like to see processes, and something going on quickly from stage to stage, find Mr. Gillott's factory a place of almost fascinating interest. They can, indeed, observe the steel pen emerge from its native metal, see it pressed and stamped, and again pressed and stamped, slitted, annealed, coloured, and finally boxed and packed. They can also see the penholders produced and inhale the sweet and pungent fragrance of cedar wood, and they can look on the production of the pen boxes which are made in so many attractively coloured varieties. All this is to be seen in the course of a little march through Mr. Gillott's factory, which is, indeed, a pattern of order and cleanliness, and so well conducted as to be almost like a real adult school of industry. Female labour is largely employed--as is customary in the pen trade--the nimble fingers and deft hands of many girls finding useful employment, without fatiguing labour, in the various processes of the pen-making business. Pen-making is, of course, a great industry, but there are pens and pens, and for some of the lower qualities the trade price is of incredible