The woodwork of the Swiss Cottage, at the late Colosseum, London, in the Regent’s Park, was only varnished. In using stain on any description of wood, the stain should always be allowed to get quite dry before sizing, as that gives it a fair chance of striking into the wood. Glue size is the best for stained work, made so thin that there is no fear of putting it on in patches. After the size is quite dry also, varnish; and if the first coat does not stand out quite sufficiently to please the eye, give it a second coat. Some persons use stain and varnish together, doing away with size; but this is a very poor method, for should the wood get scratched or damaged in any way, the varnish and stain come off together, leaving a white place, if it be white wood that is stained. A painter who has been in the trade forty years, recently remarked to us, “You must size, or else the varnish won’t come out; it won’t show that it _is_ varnish; the wood soaks it up; while there is any suction going on the varnish’ll go in. The sizing stops all suction.” A great many experiments and attempts have been made at different times to colour wood. John of Verona first conceived the idea. The celebrated B. Pallissy investigated the cause of the veins, &c., in wood, and tried mordant solutions applied to the surface, wetting the surface with certain acids, immersing the wood in water to bring out the veinage, &c. Ebony has often been imitated by penetrating sycamore, plane, and lime woods to a certain depth with pyrolignite of iron, gall-nuts, &c. Werner, in 1812, obtained great success at Dijon in colouring the woods by filtration. Marloye, in 1833, constructed a machine to colour wood by placing it erect in a cylinder, sucking out the air at one end, and forcing up the colouring solution through the other. He gave the credit of this to Bréant. Marloye has manufactured many mathematical instruments of wood coloured in this way, _which does not warp_. If we could afford the space, we would willingly give a _résumé_ of the attempts of well known experimentalists to colour wood. We can only give the year and name in each case: 1709. Magnol. 1733. La Baisse. 1735. Hales. 1735. Buffon. 1754. Bonnet. 1758. Du Hamel. 1804. Saussure. During the recent war between France and Germany, the latter country advanced matters, their supplies of coloured woods from France being gone. As we have made so many remarks against painting wood, it is only right that we should give some description of it, which we will now do. House painting, according to Mr. W. Papworth, in his lecture on “Fir, Deal, and House Painting,” 1857, did not come into _general_ use until about the period of William and Mary, and Anne, up to which time either colouring by distemper or by whitewash had been in vogue for plaster work, leaving inside woodwork more or less untouched.