In order to illustrate my remarks on the processes of colouring woods by burning or etching, I may point to a large writing bureau, or secrA(C)taire, belonging to Sir Richard Wallace, made by Riesener, in 1769 (and signed), for Stanislaus, king of Poland. It is decorated partly with reticulated pattern work, partly with the royal cipher in medallions, and with other medallions containing emblematic figures, such as a carrier pigeon, a cock, the emblem of vigilance, or the head of a girl placing her finger on her lips, an emblem of silence. All these medallion figures are broadly drawn, the very slightest and most delicate tint only being added to represent shading, while the drawing is a single line lightly pencilled. The materials used in the best marquetry are lime, holly, box, maple, beech, poplar, for white; pear, laburnum, palm (cut across the grain), lignum vitA|, walnut, teak, partridge-wood, for brown; wood called in the trade fustic, satin-wood, for yellow; tulip, purple-wood, amboyna, mahogany, thuya, log-wood, cam-wood, and varieties of these woods, for red; ebony for black, or stained wood. Greens and blues are also stained with metallic dyes. The finest of the old work may be called studies in brown and white, and the red woods are used sparingly; the dyed woods still more so, nor can they be said ever to be really effective. As an example of great mechanical skill in a modern piece of very difficult execution, I might call attention to Messrs. Jackson and Graham's elaborate cabinet of marquetry, in patterns of Oriental character, after designs by the late Mr. Owen Jones (sent to the Vienna Exhibition by Messrs. Jackson and Graham). It had an architectural front, with detached columns and groups of architectural mouldings, some of them put together with the lines of moulding in woods of contrasted hue, an element of ornamentation that took from the unity and completeness of cap or corona mouldings. The little columns of an inch and a half diameter were entirely covered with reticulated pattern in different woods. As the shafts were tapering, so the reticulated patterns had to be graduated in size from top to bottom. This was a feat of most difficult execution, nor was it the only difficulty in this portion of the design. The marquetry in the instance of these columns had to be wrapped round each circular shaft; and each edge, therefore, of every portion of pattern and groundwork had to be sawn out with bevelled edges, so that when rolled, the inner edges might meet and the outer edges remain in contact, which would not be so, were they not bevelled: the contrary would happen in that case, and the outer edges would start in sunder. These columns were two feet and some inches high, and the little reticulations of pattern recurred many dozens of times. The conditions of which I speak had to be carefully observed in the case of each. The pattern, too, was graduated, as above stated, so that they had to be sawn out by