Few mechanical contrivances present so striking an illustration of the application of human ingenuity to the production of important results, and to the saving of labour, as these printing machines. To see the sheets of paper travelling along the tapes--to see them shoot downwards, carried sideways in one direction and back again, and delivered with half a million of words impressed upon them in less than three seconds, seems like the work of magic. To copy that number of words, thus printed in three seconds, would occupy a rapid penman forty days, working ten hours a day. [Illustration] Great as are the printing powers of these machines of Mr. Applegath's, they have been surpassed more recently by one placed close beside them, invented by Mr. Hoe, of New York. In that machine the type cylinder is placed horizontally, by which means the paper is supplied directly to it without altering its direction. As many as twenty thousand impressions in an hour have been produced by the American machine, but it is not yet sufficiently perfected to be brought into regular use. In another part of the _Times_ establishment there is an ingenious machine for wetting the paper, by which contrivance much labour and time are saved. The paper, heaped in a pile at one end of a table, is presented in quires at a time to the action of a roller, which drags it on to a moving endless blanket, that is kept wet by a stream of water, and the upper surface is wetted by a long brush, placed over the blanket. The wetted paper is heaped upon a truck, which gradually descends, to keep the upper sheets on a level with the table, till the paper is piled up a yard in thickness. The truck is then raised, by hydraulic pressure, to the level of the floor, and is wheeled away and another one is loaded. Between nine and ten tons of paper are thus wetted daily; and the sheets of the _Times_ printed during a year, if spread out and piled one upon another, would form a column as high as Mont Blanc. The quantity of ink daily consumed in the printing is upwards of two hundredweight. The machine is worked by two steam engines, each of 16-horse power; and the noise of the numerous wheels and rapidly revolving cylinders is almost deafening. The great rapidity and the comparative cheapness of printing by machines, together with the greater facility of making paper by machinery, have been the means of creating a demand for books which it would be impossible to supply, unless those means were at command. Thousands and hundreds of thousands of copies of publications, that spread knowledge among the people of the highest interest to the welfare of man, and replete with useful information of every kind, are now sold at prices which would be impossible, were it not for the improvements that have been made in the manufacture of paper, and in the means of printing.