Page:LA2-NSRW-2-0262.jpg

FURNITURE-MANUFACTURE  by the burning of the fuel; the greater part is lost in the escaping gases and in connection with radiation. In most furnaces not over two or three per cent. is utilized. In flame-furnaces this rises to 15 or 20 per cent., and in some blast-furnaces it may rise to 80 per cent.  Furniture-Manufacture. This industry at the present day flourishes more in America than elsewhere. There is, however, no special form or style of furniture recognised as more correct than another. Steam was first applied to the making of furniture in 1815. Several historic styles are still followed in furnituremaking, including the light Chippendale, the heavy mahogany, the elaborate rococo, the severe Gothic and the Spanish-mission style. By 1850 most ordinary furniture was machine-made, for scrolls and ornaments could be readily and cheaply wrought into it by the machines. The best cabinets, however, continued to be made by hand. The great centers of the furniture-industry in the United States are New York, Chicago and Grand Rapids, Mich.; but six other cities in the United States produce furniture to the value of over $2,000,000 yearly. In respect of design America is responsible for many useful contrivances in the manufacture of furniture, including principally folding-beds and rocking-chairs. But lovers of artistic furniture complain that the use of machinery has led to the sacrifice of good taste to economy of production. The recent extension of the teaching of woodwork in American schools is likely to elevate the standard of taste and workmanship in the furniture-manufacture.  Furs. The history of the development of Canada, of the earlier struggles between the French and English for possession, of the opening of the northwest, which is still going on, and of exploration is largely the history of the fur-trade. Though the pursuit of fur-bearing animals has long ceased to be one of the principal industries of Canada, it in 1906 exported no less than $2,464,337 in furs alone. See.  Fusiyama or Fujiyama, a sacred volcano, the loftiest mountain of Japan, stands on the main island, about 60 miles southwest of Tokio. It rises some 12,200 feet above the sea, with a crater 500 feet deep. Its last eruption was in 1707. The cone is free from snow only from July to September, when thousands of white-robed Buddhist pilgrims make the ascent easily enough. A traveler visiting Japan was asked: “Have you seen it?” “What?” he said. “Oh, it; when you see it, you will know it.” And one day when the clouds that had been covering the sky broke away, he saw high up in the heavens the snow-capped peak of Fujiyama, looking like a fairy castle floating on a bank of

clouds, and exclaimed, with as much enthusiasm as the Japanese themselves: “Oh! I've seen it! I've seen it!”  Fuze, a means of igniting an explosive at the required instant, whether it is used in blasting, military operations and mines or as the bursting charge of a shell or bomb. It is of two kinds. One is the instantaneous, the other the ordinary fuze, the first burning at 30 feet a second, the other at three feet a minute. The ordinary fuze consists of a train of gunpowder in layers of tape covered with gutta-percha; in the instantaneous fuze, which is distinguished by crossed threads of orange worsted outside, quick match takes the place of gunpowder. Powder-hose is sometimes used when no other fuze is available. It is made of strips of linen, forming, when filled with powder, what is called a sausage, one half to one inch in diameter.

The fuzes used for shells are of a totally different character and of many patterns. They are of two classes; those which depend for their action upon the rate of burning of the composition in them, called time-fuzes; and those which burst the shell on its striking the target, ground or water, and called percussion-fuzes. Time-fuzes are hollow, truncated cones of beech-wood, carrying a column of fuze-composition, which burns at a fixed rate. Marks and figures on the outside show twentieths of a second or less, and indicate where the hole must be made by a fuze-borer in order that the flame may have access through it to the shell at the desired instant during its flight. Time-fuzes are chiefly used with shrapnel shell and mortars. Their length varies from three to six inches, and they are fixed into the head of the shell before firing. The thickness of iron would prevent the passage of the flame through the hole made by the borer in the shorter fuzes, and, therefore, two or more powder-channels are made in them, parallel to the fuze-composition, to communicate its flame to the bursting charge. In guns having windage, that is, in which the ball is smaller than the bore of the gun, the fuze is ignited by the flame of the cartridge enveloping the shell, and quick match is placed on the top of the fuze to facilitate this. A metal-cover protects the quick match until the last moment, and is then torn off by means of a tape provided for that purpose. In guns having no windage a percussion arrangement is placed in the head of the fuze, so that the shock of the discharge may ignite the fuze composition. Fig. 1 shows a section of the