The application of machinery to the production of personal ornaments in gold and silver can only be economically and successfully carried on when there is a large demand for similar objects, that is to say, objects of precisely the same design and decoration throughout. In machine-made jewelry everything is stereotyped, so to speak, and the only work required for the hand is to fit the parts together--in some instances scarcely that. A design is made, and from it steel dies are sunk for stamping out as rapidly as possible from a plate of rolled metal the portion represented by each die. It is in these steel dies that the skill of the artist die-sinker is manifested. Brooches, ear-rings, pinheads, bracelets, lockets, pendants, &c., are struck out by the gross. This is more especially the case in silver and in plated work--that is, imitation jewelry--the base of which is an alloy, afterwards gilt by electro-plating. With these ornaments imitation stones in paste and glass, pearls, &c., are used, and it is remarkable that of late years some of the best designs, the most simple, appropriate and artistic, have appeared in imitation jewelry. It is only just to those engaged in this manufacture to state distinctly that their work is never sold wholesale for anything else than what it is. The worker in gold only makes gold or real jewelry, and he only makes of a quality well known to his customers. The producer of silver work only manufactures silver ornaments, and so on throughout the whole class of plated goods. It is the retailer who, if he is unprincipled, takes advantage of the ignorance of the buyer and sells for gold that which is in reality an imitation, and which he bought as such. The imitations of old styles of jewelry which are largely sold in curiosity shops at foreign places of fashionable resort are said to be made in Germany, especially at Munich.