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 of the 25,000 is of a distinctly different pattern!

The iron house which holds the charcoal must not be forgotten. The charcoal is stowed away in sacks very much resembling soot bags, and fifty tons are used every year. Charcoal, indeed, is one of the principal ingredients of the common firework—the farthing and halfpenny goods. The cheap squib or cracker, which the youth of the town delight to let off at our heels, is principally composed of saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal. Only about twenty tons of gunpowder is necessary for a year's manufacture, and this is only needed to lift shells or to make a noise. The better class of fireworks, known in the trade as coloured fireworks, are for the most part made of chlorate of potash, shellac, and a proportion of mineral salts to give the requisite colour.

As we hasten across the field to the secluded houses where the filling takes place we do not fail to take note of a huge cauldron near an immense boiler. The cauldron in question is the paste-mixing pot, and it will take a sack of flour to fill it. The water is poured in and then steam is turned on at something like 30 lb. pressure. You could count in another building 150,000 fairy lamps of every colour of the rainbow—violet, blue, white, green, yellow, plum, and ruby. The ruby glass—the most expensive—is made in Bohemia, and the other colours in France. When they return from giving a fairy-like appearance to the trees and paths, they are washed in pans capable of holding 150 at a time. Alas! many of these fairy lights which leave the place are destined never to return. 5,000 have been broken at a single display, and at a recent flower show at Newcastle-on-Tyne, when everything was swept away, some 6,000 little lamps were carried away by the windy weather. Just a little arithmetical calculation in the carpenters' shop, where the strips of wood are cut from the great planks which lie scattered about the place, for rockets, reveals the fact that close upon a million strips are here, and 300 ropes of nine feet length, used for putting up set pieces.

We have now reached the little houses where the firework cases are filled, and for the first time we realise the great precau-