Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/298

284 this extent were occupied by these cutting lofts. Here are racks seemingly interminable and numberless, filled with plates of glass of all shapes and sizes, or what may be called glass slabs, many of them with broken corners, and rough-looking in dimensions. Along the whole length of each loft on both sides run the cutting benches, all manned by a battalion of workers, each with his rule and diamond-pointed knife, cutting up the sheets into panes of various sizes, making the most and best out of each. And here I learned a fact which illustrates the closer economy in utilizing odds and ends than once prevailed. The ten thousand little bits left over from this pane-cutting are made into slides for stereoscopic views, and find a large market for that use. Thus a scrap of glass from which a piece three inches by one can be cut is worked into a slide for the camera. In no other establishment in the world can one get such a full idea of the infinite uses which glass is made to serve as in these immense works. The artistic department, perhaps, will generally excite the greatest curiosity and admiration. This may be divided into two sections. One contains an acre of sheets of every tinting which all the rainbows or all the flowers that ever arched or graced the earth could supply. Indeed, the sight of them serves as a lesson in useful knowledge. After all one remembers of flower shows, he feels himself truly