necks, and they were usually called lachrymatories ; they were made of glass and pottery. Such urns as these were placed on the sepulchres of the deceased, as a memorial of the affection and distress of those who wept over them. From all this we learn the propriety of the expression which the psalmist used, "Put thou my tears into thy bottle." The meaning of that expression, divested of its figurative language, may be, Let my distress, and the tears I shed in consequence of it, be ever before thee, excite thy kind remembrance of me, and plead with thee to grant me the relief I stand in need of."

BELLOWS.

The only reference to the bellows in Scripture is in the prophecies of Jeremiah, vi. 29, 30. Speaking of the children of Israel, he 66 says, The bellows are burned, the lead is consumed of the fire; the founder melteth in vain: for the wicked are not plucked away. Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the Lord hath rejected them." The description here given by the prophet, is well explained by a process called cupellation. Precious metal known to be combined with those of a baser kind is put, with a due proportion of lead, into a shallow crucible made of burnt bones, called a cupel. After this, the melting of the metals is effected by exposing them to a great heat, in a small earthen oven fixed in the midst of a furnace. The lead, during this exposure, becomes converted into a glassy calx, which dissolves and attracts all

the imperfect metals, and leaves that which is precious free from alloy. In the process the prophet alludes to, the lead had been consumed, the bellows burned, and there was no scoriæ running down the sides of the cupel to indicate that all was right within. Thus every method of chastisement, every species of instruction had been exhausted upon the Jews, but there was no reformation; they were fit for nothing but to be rejected for ever.

The oldest representation of bellows is in the Egyptian paintings copied in the work of Rosellini. There are two pair of bellows, one on each side of the fire, with which they are connected by long tubes of wood terminating in pointed metal snouts. A string is attached to each bellows, and the blower takes one string in his right hand, the other in the left. He presses with one foot on the bellows that is filled with air, at the same time raising the other from that which is just exhausted, and also pulls upwards with the string that is attached to it. The common bellows which we use, consisting of two boards joined together by a piece of leather, was known to the Greeks at an early date; and some suppose, from a representation engraved in Montfauçon, from an ancient Roman lamp, that the wooden bellows was not altogether unknown to the Romans. In the East, bellows are scarcely used except by those who work metals; for common purposes, the mouth is employed, as it is frequently by the humbler classes in our own country.

THE SAW.

The first mention of the saw, chronologically, in the Bible, occurs in the narration of the siege of Rabbah, where it is said that David "cut with saws, and with harrows of iron, and with axes," the conquered Ammonites, 1 Chron. xx. 3; or, as it is said in the parallel passage, 2 Sam. xii. 31, he "put them under saws," etc.; both which phrases probably mean, as some commentators contend, that he made them slaves; employing them in such laborious services as sawyers, miners, hewers of wood, brickmakers, and so forth.

When the saw was invented, or by what nation, we have no positive information. Grecian fable assigns the honour of its invention to the famous artist Dædalus, or rather to his nephew Talus, or, as some call him, Perdix. It states that he, having found the jaw-bone of a fish, or, as some say, a serpent, was led to imitate it by filing teeth in iron, and thus formed a saw. is generally thought, however, that the Greeks, as well as other adjacent nations, borrowed the art of making the saw from the Egyptians. That it was known to that people at a very early period, is most certain, from its appearance on their ancient sculptures.

It

We see from this, that the saw was not one of the most ancient inventions; the reason for which may be, that it was required from the first to be constructed of iron, which was then unknown. The improvements made in the shape of the saw, however,

were very rapid; it was, in fact, made anciently in a similar form in which we continue to use it. An engraving in the "Antiquités d'Herculaneum," which is graphically described by Beckmann, confirms the truth of this. He says, "Two genii, or winged Cupids, are represented at the end of a bench, which consists of a long table that rests upon two four-footed stools. The piece of wood that is to be sawn through is secured by cramps. The saw with which the genii are at work has a perfect resemblance to our frame saw it consists of a square frame, having in the middle a blade, the teeth of which stand perpendicularly to the plane of the frame. The piece of wood that is to be sawn extends beyond the end of the bench, and one of the workmen appears standing, and the other sitting on the ground. The arms in which the blade is fastened have the same form as that given to them at present. In the bench are seen holes, in which the cramps that hold the timber are stuck. The cramps are shaped like the figure 7; and the ends of them reach below the boards that form the top of the bench."

It has been supposed by some, that saws for cutting stone were not invented earlier than the fourth century B.C. This is erroneous. In the description of the house which Solomon built for Pharaoh's daughter it is stated, that the costly stones which were used in the building were "sawed with saws," 1 Kings vii. 9. It may be observed, that the saws of the East differ from ours in this remarkable particular, the

point of the teeth is inclined towards, not from the handle; so that the sawyer makes his impression on the wood, not in thrusting the instrument from him, but in pulling it towards him.

The only passage in which the saw occurs in a figurative sense, is Isa. x. 15, wherein the prophet introduces it to show, that, as that instrument is a passive agent in the hands of those that use it, so the Assyrians were but instruments in the hands of God, in punishing those nations over whom they proudly exulted.

THE AXE.

The axe appears to have been known at a very remote period of time. This we discover from the figure of an Egyptian carpenter, working with that implement, in the great work of Rosellini. We learn this fact also from Scripture. In the law of privilege, which the Hebrew lawgiver laid down for the manslayer, it is said, "When a man goeth into the wood with his neighbour to hew wood, and his hand fetcheth a stroke with the axe to cut down the tree, and the head" (iron) "slippeth from the helve," (wood,)" and lighteth upon his neighbour, that he die; he shall flee unto one of those cities," alluding to the cities of refuge," and live," Deut. xix. 5. From this we gather that, not only was the axe used in those early days, but that it was of a similar construction to that used in modern days.

To the effective use of the axe there are several al