11. Cumberland contains a very rich iron ore, and more than twenty mines are at work in that county. The Furness district of Lancashire abounds with iron ore of the best quality. In Durham, large iron-works are connected with many of the collieries, at some of which thousands of persons are employed.

12. The Black Country in South Staffordshire has extensive iron-works. Here many of the leading “iron” towns are gathered around Birmingham, the chief centre of our hardware manufactures.

13. South Wales is also an important iron district, in which upwards of fifty blast furnaces are at work. More than one-third of the iron obtained in England and Wales is smelted on the South Wales coal-field.

14. Most of our large towns have iron-works, where farming implements, machines, girders for bridges, and many other articles, are made. Iron ships are built at most of our ship-building ports.

15. Sheffield, in the south of Yorkshire, is noted for its cutlery. Sheffield-made knives are famous throughout the world.

16. We may be said to live in the Iron Age. Iron is king, for without it all our other manufactures would almost cease to exist.

49. THE BLACK COUNTRY.

1. In the centre of England is a wide district known as the "Black Country." Once it was as fair a region as any in our smiling land; but now the trees have been cut down, and the grass has faded away.

2. For miles and miles the green fields and waving forests have given place to tall chimneys, iron furnaces, foundries, and forges; while roads and railways, tramways and canals, cross and re-cross one another in every direction.

3. The ground is strewn with coal - dust, and heaps of clinkers lie on every hand. The houses are dingy, and the workmen who live in them are as swarthy as Hindus.

4. It is indeed a black country-black by day with smoke from a forest of chimneys, but blacker still by night, when the glare of countless furnaces only serves to deepen the gloom.

5. It is a country of coal and iron. Here are found, close together, the materials needed for the manufacture of iron and iron goods.

6. Birmingham, the fourth largest town in England, is the capital of the Black Country. Everything that is made of iron, from a needle to a steamengine, is manufactured in this town of work-shops.

7. Here soldiers are supplied with guns; farmers with spades, hoes, hatchets, and scythes; housewives with ovens, fire-irons, kettles, and pans, and also with pins and needles, thimbles, and hooks and eyes; scholars with steel pens; and children with toys.

8. Birmingham has workers not only in iron, but also in every other kind of metal. Here gold and silver and brass are made into brooches, rings, and all kinds of gilded and plated ornaments. Cheap jewelry, in which a little gold or silver goes a long way, is also made in large quantities.

9. All over the world may be found goods which were manufactured in this great centre of industry. The American Indian shoots the bison or goes on the war-path with a Birmingham rifle; the negro cuts down the sugar-cane with a Birmingham hatchet; and the emigrant cooks his frugal dinner in a Birmingham sauce-pan over a Birmingham stove, and carries his food and his valuables in boxes stamped with the name of a Birmingham maker.

Smelting.... Rotherham (Yorkshire); Swansea and Merthyr-Tydvil (Wales). Cutlery... .Sheffield (Yorkshire); Birmingham (Warwickshire); Wolverhampton (Staffordshire).

Machinery..Newcastle (Northumberland); Manchester (Lancashire); Bir

mingham.

Engines..... Crewe (Chester); Derby (Derbyshire); Manchester.

Guns

Ships.

Nails

Locks.

Needles...

Sheffield; Birmingham.

London, Liverpool, Birkenhead, Newcastle, Sunderland, Shields,
Hull.

Birmingham, Leeds, Newcastle, Dudley, and Bromsgrove.

Wolverhampton and Walsall.

. Redditch.

Pins, Pens, and Buttons.. Birmingham.

50. THE PLOUGHSHARE OF OLD ENGLAND. 1. The sailor boasts his stately ship,

(736)

The bulwark of the isle ;

The soldier loves his sword, and sings
Of tented plains the while;
But we will hang the ploughshare up

Within our fathers' halls,
And guard it as the deity
Of plenteous festivals.

We'll pluck the brilliant poppies,
And the far-famed barley-corn,
To entwine with bursting wheat-ears
That outshine the saffron morn.
We'll crown it with a glowing heart,
And pledge our fertile land,
The ploughshare of Old England,
And the sturdy peasant band!

2. The work it does is good and blest,
And may be proudly told;
We see it in the teeming barns
And fields of waving gold.

Its metal is unsullied,

No blood-stain lingers there;

"God speed the plough" and let it thrive,
Unshackled everywhere.

The bark may rest upon the wave,

The spear may gather dust,

But never may the prow that cuts

The furrow lie and rust.

Fill

up, fill up with glowing heart, And pledge our fertile land,

The ploughshare of Old England,

And the sturdy peasant band!—ELIZA COOK.

1. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, in the Southern States of America, there grows a pretty plant with dark-green leaves, large yellow flowers, and pods of about the size of a walnut.

2. When these pods are ripe they burst open, and we see in them a soft, downy substance, like the wool we get from the sheep. In olden times men called the cotton down the "wool of trees."

3. This soft down is the famous cotton that comes to this country in large quantities, and gives