ard Watch and Clock Co., of Boston, and George A. Jones & Co., of New York, whose work will bear a favorable comparison with the best European regulators.

The manufacture of the costly parlor and library clocks, with movements as perfect and almost as fine as those of a watch, and in marble, bronze and ormolu cases, has not till recently been successful here, owing to the much higher price which skilled labor commands here than in France and Switzerland. Messrs. Seth Thomas' Sons & Co. undertook it in 1866, and doing the greater part of their work by machinery, have succeeded in producing this class of work of a quality which equals the French, and at prices materially lower. They find a ready market for their goods, and are also manufacturing very beautiful and perfect railway lever and excellent calendar clocks. The entire production of clocks in the United States amounts to about 725,000 per annum, and their cash value to about $1,850,000.

AMERICAN WATCHES.

THE watch as a timepiece for the pocket was first invented by Peter Hele, at Nuremberg, in Germany, in 1467. It was not then called a "watch," but the "Nuremberg animated egg," and its shape conformed to its name. It was an expensive trinket, and though keeping indifferent time, varying nearly an hour a day, took a year to construct, and as late as the beginning of the sixteenth century, cost the equivalent of fif teen hundred dollars. In the course of the next hundred years, the English watchmakers made many improvements, which rendered the watch more serviceable, and at the same time cheaper. It was still, however, clumsy in shape, almost spherical, and the name bull's eye" was very appropriately applied to it. Successive improvements have brought the watch to a high degree of perfection; but these, with the intense competition constantly cheapening the price, rendered a minute subdivision of labor necessary, and it has been carried to such an extent that in Switzerland, operatives spend their whole lives in producing a single one of the many pieces which go to make up the entire watch movement. During the present century, owing to this minute subdivision of labor, the Swiss have nearly

monopolized the manufacture of all classes of watches, the English, who were their principal rivals, being unable to compete with their cheap labor. The business is still carried on to a moderate extent in England, but most watchmakers there import from Switzerland a portion or the whole of the parts that go to make up the "movements." Some of these pieces are made by machinery, but the larger proportion by hand, and are consequently liable to all the imperfections of hand-work of such delicate character. It remained for the United States, the country where labor commands the highest price, to compete successfully with Switzerland, where labor is cheapest. Of course, this could only be done by the employment of machinery in producing every part of the watch. There have been, perhaps for sixty years, watchmakers in this country, who, importing the springs, fusees, and escapements, have with manifold toil worked out the other portions of the watch movement; but the manufacture of watches exclusively American and made in considerable part by machinery, dates no farther back than 1852 or 1853. In 1852, a Boston watchmaker, A. L. Denison by name, conceived the idea that by gathering all the machines used in Switzerland for making the different parts of the watch under one roof, running them by one power, and supplementing their performance largely by hand labor, it might be possible to create a manufactory which could turn out ten watches a day. His friends thought him insane, but he succeeded in persuading three other watchmakers, Edward Howard, David P. Davis, and Samuel Curtis, to sympathize with his views, and the four built a factory at Roxbury, Mass. They had at first serious difficulties to encounter. The Swiss authorities would not permit the exportation of either machines, models or drawings; and the pioneers were compelled to invent and construct their own machines, and finally (early in 1853, we believe) they completed their first watch. It was not as elegant as many they have made since, but it was and is an excellent time-keeper. Their first location was unfortunate, from the prevalence of a fine, almost impalpable dust from the clay soil, which proved fatal to the more delicate operations of watchmaking. They were compelled therefore to remove to the banks of the Charles River, a little above the village of Waltham, and other partners coming in, they have reared a very extensive establish