SWISS INDUSTRIES.

Colonist, Volume XVI, Issue 1664, 29 August 1873, Page 4

SWISS INDUSTRIES.

The Vienna correspondent of the Melbourne Argus, writes concerning the Exhibition: —

The main transept, in which the Swiss industries are found, is conspicuous for their excellence and their beautiful arrangement. The way in whioh the textile manufactures were shown was better than: ours. Every variety of yarn was properly noted, with its respective fineness and weight. A great deal of trouble is caused in<the cotton trade by the differences of marks that exist in different countries, preventing that complete unanimity which should exist in the trade throughout the world. Manchester makers refer to quite another yarn to what Swiss makers do, and the same with reference to North; German makers, so that to obvitte this it is proposed to hold an international congress during the Exhibition, so as to establish a uniform rate. Here we have one of the real benefits of a gathering like this, because people who are engaged in the same resoarches all over the world meet together and can rectify the want which has struck all of them. St. Gall, Aargau, Solothern, Thirgau, and Wihterther are the principal Swiss centre* cf textile work, and they are all represented. The cotton goods, like those of England, Portugal, and other countries, show a tendency to bright Indian colors. There are more than 2,000,000 spindles at work in Switzerland, the industry , being tolerably scattered over all the cantons except Geneva. Hand nmbroidery ia principally carried on in Appengell, and machine embroidery in St. Gall and Thurgau. The tissue fabrios made in St. Gall are individually trashy enough, but they make up * very showy ingredient in holiday costume, and look well when worn as a kind of breastplate. Kunz, of Zurich, has a large trophy of yarns, with pretty views of the different factories which he owns ; and pleasant they are to look upon when one thinks of the miserable surroundings of Manchester and Leeds operations. A cotton factory need not be an ugly building, nor must it be necessarily in a filthy town. Embroidery and straw work are distinctive features, as is also the beautiful net lace which hangs from the walls in large festoons, quite cutting out our small display from Nottingham. The watches are the most interesting exhibits in this court, and occupy much more ground comparatively than any other industry. Wo see all sorts here—cheap, dear, plain, ornamented, scientific, and ourious. The cheap watches predominate. Schtnann, of Bienne, sends them by the handful, and piles them in a great jar, as though they were no account whatever. They are tumbling all over the place, as though of no value. To those who know anything about the watch trade, they are of very little value, and are principally made for the American trade, for which anything is good enough, and for the workman who tbinks that he has done a good thing if be has bought a watoh for 15 francs. But his bargain is a dear one, for it baa to go to be mended about twice a month, at a charge of three or four francs per visit. The fact it that a Swiss watch is not necessarily a good one. There are oountry districts in Switzerland which are entirely ocoupied in this trade, but the works are of a very common description, and all the really good watches, are made in Geneva. Some of the makers who exhibit here are from the Chaux de Fonda, a great watch district; and send ambitious looking watches, the prioea of which are auprisingly low; but the works in them are poor, and the only good part ia the caee. The moat interesting portion of this section are the makers who show individual parts of a watch. One (Francillon) has a general collection of the various item* that are required before the watch will go. Kleia shows only watohsprings, some of them so minute that it requires a microscope to trace the delicate spirals, which look more like soap-bubbles than anything else. Another \ sends watch faces, which have a decided expression of their own, but which look rather blank as they lie there unable to be of use. The village of Couvet ia entirely ocoupied not with making watches, but the machinery for making watohes ; and beautifully constructed as they are, it is surprising what a big tool ia required to make a Very little thing. Then, again, elaborate tools are wanted for that beautiful gold chasing which covers the backa of our watches with such beautiful and regular concentric circles. Nearly all the watchmaking trade ia paid by piecework, but perhaps few of my readers know that the watohchasers are not paid at all, but, on tbe contrary, they very frequently have to give back money to their employers. The secret of this is that they are recouped by the amount of gold that ia shaved off, and if this ia over a certain quantity they have to refund the money. Some beautiful deoorationa are shown by Badollet, of Geneva, who ia by far the best watohmaker now. He has a watch the size of a sixpence glittering with diamonds, and priced at 3000 francs—a by no means out of the way price; a larger aize is only half that price; and there ia another charming one with a cameo head aurrounded by a diamond oirole. Wood-carving ia another .speciality, and there ia a profusion of all kinds, from the country house, with inscriptions, and probably a musioal elook, to the simple letter-weight or paper-knife. It is ourious how the taste for musical boxes ia blended with this carving, as though the one was not complete without the other. Outside the building in the. grounds is a house entirely full of these oontrivancea (tpielioerke), from a grand mechanical organ which oontaina a little bit of every instrument under the sun, to the book whioh begins to play as soon m you open it, the : bottle which discourses aweet music a. aoon aa you pour from it, or the chair from which you jump up in a state of cold chill at hearing the Wedding March peal forth in consequence of your profane attempt to ait down. The other points ofintereat in the Swiaa court are some exoellent photographs from St. Gall, inoluding a marvellous old woman's head, with every wrinkle in it; some good pianos from Zurich t pretty brown-glazed ware from Schaffhausen, and a capital collection of relief maps, with geological and phyeical features carefully laid down. Some of the models of the glaoier districts, for instance the Aletsch and St. Gothard glaoiers, are worthy of all praise, and even the school mapa are far auperior to anything that I have seen in England. Finally, the Swiss department ia supplied with aa excellent oaf 6 outside, in whioh nationality and artistic ta<te are equally ahown. Each of the wcoden archways are ornamented with tbe arms of m santon, and each of the pretty girls who wait ia dressed after the costume of that canton, ao that it it no wonder that the verandah on a fin* day ia ft favorite retting place. >

' tutti* BiiDliriW.-'By Orpheui 0. KeM— \N Americam male parent, unto his babes said he i , " Come hither, pretty little ones, and sit on either knee, And tell me what you've lately heard your mother read, and me P" In his fatherly assurance, and fond parental way, He wanted to disoorer what the innocents would say, About a missionary book they'd heard the other day. Full of glee spake young Alonzp, all legs and curly hair: " You yead about the man they hung' and all the people there ; ... And mama yead the funny part of how it made him ' swear." i ■_ ■ . ,- : Joining quickly in, oried Minnie'—all waist and dimpled neok : "It wasn't half so funny though, as that about the oheque • They caught somebody forging, 'cause he was so green I'epect." . But the thing I liked the bestest," Alonzo piped amain, " Was how somebody yunned away, and won't come back again, And tookt somebody's wife with him upon a yailyoad train." "Then you wasn't listening, 'Lonzo," came swift from Minnie, small, " When papa yead about the girl that tookt her only shawl, And wrapt a baby up in it, and left it. in the hall." •,Oh, I want hey?" trilled Alonzo dwmayed to be outdone; " I'm goV to learn to yead, myself and you can have i * the Sun ; And I'll yead SerahV ' Personals,' and never tell you one!" . The American male parent, his hair arose on end; Oti either knee an infant form he did reverse and bend, And from their little mouths straitway made dismal howl* ascend. Ahts with , Powerful Teeth. — An- amusing story, suggested by recent ravages of white ants, is told by a correspondent of the China Mail:—" Some years ago, when Bencoolen was a portion of.our Indian Empire, a deficit occurred in the treasury of the place. An investigation followed, and the result of the inquiry elicited the following information, namely, ' that the white ants had got into the strong room, and eaten up the dollars.' This was.deemed satisfactory, and the matter was allowed to drop." TTpa and Downs ov Lifb. —The Emperor of Austria, says the New York Times, has two Miuisters in his employ to-day who have both been under sentence of death (or high treason —Count Andrasiy, Minister for Foreign Affairs for the Empire; and Herr Florian Ziemalkowski, Mayor of Lemberg, who has lately been appointed Prime Minister for the Province of G-alicia, These are striking instances of the ups and downs of life. Here is Count Andrassy, who, while an exile in London, supported himself by giving lessons on the guitar, and was often so poor that, like Johnson and Savage, he paced the streets throughout the night, having no means to get a lodging, now the most powerful subject in the Austrian Empire. Mb. Spukgkos and the Butchers. —Mr. Spurgeon is a man of odd. eloquence. * If he were less sincere, it would be impossible not to liken him to the gentle Chadband.so unctuously picturesque is he at times. On Easter Tuesday, there was a great Butchers' Tea Party at the Tabernacle—a party which did away .with 11501 bs. of meat, 10 hundredweight of bread and cake, and a rirer of tea. Mr. Spurgeon preached to the assembly a sermon having in it * number of pleasing and appropriate allusions —one of which, for instance, was the declaration that " if anybody could make a rocking-horse go 16 miles an hour it was a butcher," to which refined clerical jest he added the advice to the Jehus of the trade, to take a little more pains not to drive over passengers. He likewise prayed with his audience of 1200 butchers, boldly invoking " a Divine blessing on the shambles." Further even than this he carried his idea of the fitness of things, and gratified his taste for local colouring by causing the 1200 to sing the hymn : — ' "There ia a fountain filled with blood,'*

The whole performance certainly seems very queer* but it may have had a more instant effect upon the congregation than a more sacred-seeming service would have had.— American paper. The Saturday Review has the following remarks in reference to the working of the Contagious Diseases Act:—" The. tables recently published show that at military stations protected by the Act the number of cases of the worst class of disease had sunk by a steady process from 120 per 1000 of the average strength to 542 per 1000 between the years 1865 and 1872. Ia the unprotected stations the ratio in the first of those years was 99 9, and in the last 1231. in other words, the prevalence of the disease has been in one case diminished by one-half; in the other it has increased. It .used to be said by the opponents of the Acts that the diminution in the prevalence of diseases was due to more general causes; and that the disease was diminishing without as well as within the protected area. That argument must now be abandoned'; and it must be admitted that, so far as statistics ban prove anything, they prove that a very great improvement has been effected in the health of the troops. Danobbs ov Pubs Wateb.—A writer in the Constitutional devotes an article to the " Public Health of Europe and the Dangers of Pure Water." Citing the heavy roll of diarrhoea cases in England, the instances of isolated cholera in London and Paris, and the infantile cholera in America, be argues that these maladies come, most frequently, not so much from the heat as from improper diet, and that a very common cause is the use of pure, or seemingly pure, water. It is certain, according to this writer, that the water purest in appearance frequently contains thousands of germs of all sorts, only visible through the microscope. The most effective means :of counteracting the dangers of pure water is by

boiling. ; Hoixowat's Ointment and Piiia.—The finest remedies in the World for bad legs, old wounds, sores and ulcers. If used according to directions given with them there is no wound, bad leg, or ulcerous sore, however obstinate or long standing, but will yield to their healing and ourative properties. Numbers of persons who have been patients in several of the large hospitals and under the care of eminent surgeons, without deriving the slightest benefit, have been thoroughly cured by Holloway's Ointment and Pills. For glandular swellings, tumours, scurvy and diseases of the skin there is no medioine that can be used with so good an effect. In fact in the worst forms of disease, dependent upon the oondition of the Wood, these medioines, if used conjointly, are irresistible.— Advt.