The Black Scotch, from the Sandwich Islands, whence it is sent to Valparaiso and to Sydney, New South Wales, worth from 15 to 30 pounds a ton.  The large outer rim is of a blackish, or rather greenish, tint, the centre only being white.  The outer rim was formerly considered worthless, and large quantities were thrown away as rubbish.  Change of fashion has brought the prismatic hues of the dark pearl into fashion for shooting-coats, waistcoats, and even studs.  It used to be a standing story with a Bristol barber that a square in that city had been built on thousands of pounds worth of tobacco stalks, thrown away as useless, until it was discovered that that part of the plant was capable of making a most saleable snuff.  And so in Birmingham; the Irvingite Church, on New Hall Hill, is said to be built on hundreds of tons of refuse shell, which would now be worth from 15 to 20 pounds per ton.  The third shell is the Bombay, or White Scotch, worth from 20 to 50 pounds per ton.  The fourth comes from Singapore, and is brought there to exchange for British manufactures by the native craft which frequent that free port.  It is a first-rate article, white to the edge, worth from 80 to 90 pounds per ton.  The fifth is the Mother of Pearl Shell, from Manilla, of equal value and size, but with a slight yellow tinge round the edge.

Pearl buttons are cut out and shaped by men with the lathe, polished by women with a grinding-stone, and sorted and arranged on cards by girls.

Glass Buttons were formerly in use among canal boatmen, miners, and agricultural labourers, in certain districts.  They are now chiefly made for the African market.  The process of making them and studs is well worth seeing.

Beside the buttons already enumerated, they make in Birmingham the flat iron and brass buttons, for trowsers; steel buttons, for ladies’ dresses; wooden buttons, for overcoats; agate buttons, for which material is imported from Bohemia; and, in fact, every kind of button and stud, including papier mache.

The manufacture of brass shanks is a separate trade, and the writer of the letters already quoted, states the annual production at, or upwards of, three millions per working day.  Of these, part are made by hand, but the greater number by a shank-making machine, wrought by steam power, and only requiring the attendance of one tool-maker.

“The machine feeds itself from a coil of brass or iron wire suspended from the roof, and cuts and twists into shanks, by one process, at the rate of 360 per minute, or nearly 75,000,000 per annum.  Some button manufacturers employ one of these machines; the majority buy the shanks.”

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Guns and swords.—­According to Hutton, the historian of Birmingham, the town was indebted for its occupation in supplying our army with fire-arms, to an ancestor of a gentleman who now represents a division of Warwickshire, a Sir Roger Newdigate, in the time of William iii.