The Stocking Shop, so called, is the department in which the _stocks_ to which the barrel and the lock are to be attached, are formed and finished. The wood used for gun stocks in this country is the black walnut, and as this wood requires to be seasoned some years before it is used, an immense store of it is kept on hand at the Armory--sufficient in fact for four years' consumption. The building in which this material is stored may be seen on the right hand side in the general view placed at the head of this article. It stands off from the square, and behind the other buildings. The operations conducted in the stocking shop are exceedingly attractive to all who visit the establishment. In fact it happens here as it often does in similar cases, that that which it is most interesting to witness is the least interesting to be described. The reason is that the charm in these processes consists in the high perfection and finish of the machines, in the smoothness, grace, and rapidity of their motions, and in the seemingly miraculous character of the performances which they execute. Of such things no mere description can convey any adequate idea. They must be seen to be at all appreciated. A gun stock, with all the innumerable cavities, grooves, perforations, and recesses necessary to be made in it, to receive the barrel, the lock, the bands, the ramrod, and the numerous pins and screws, all of which require a separate and peculiar modification of its form, is perhaps as irregular a shape as the ingenuity of man could devise--and as well calculated as any shape could possibly be to bid defiance to every attempt at applying machinery to the work of fashioning it. The difficulties however in the way of such an attempt, insurmountable as they would at first sight seem, have all been overcome, and every part of the stock is formed, and every perforation, groove, cavity, and socket is cut in it by machines that do their work with a beauty, a grace, and a perfection, which awaken in all who witness the process, a feeling of astonishment and delight.