The forests were felled, and the tree-tops removed and made into charcoal for use in the glass works of Bohemia. The trunks were hauled to the mills and sawed into planks of suitable thickness by gang-saws. The planks in turn were cut with circular saws into square pieces for turning, and then the pieces turned and cut on lathes, to give them the size required and the rounded shape; the pieces then steamed while in their green state for twenty-four hours in suitable boilers, then taken out and bent to the desired shape on a cast-iron frame by hand, then subjected, with the desired pattern, to the pattern-turning table, and cut; then kept locked in the pattern’s iron embrace until the pieces were dried and permanently set in shape, then clamped to a bench, filed, rasped, stained, and French polished by the deft hands of the women; then assembled in proper position in frames of the form of the chair or other article to be made, their contact surface sawed to fit at the joints, and then finally the parts glued together and further secured by the addition of a few screws or balls. Chairs, lounges and lighter furniture were thus made from bent pieces of wood with very few joints, having a neat and attractive appearance, and possessing great strength. The art has spread to other forests and other countries, and the turned, bent, highly polished and beautiful furniture of this generation would have been but a dream of beauty to the householder of a century ago. Children’s chairs are made so that the seat may be raised or lowered, or the chair converted into a perambulator. Dentist’s chairs have been developed until it is only necessary for the operator to turn a valve governing a fluid, generally oil, under pressure to raise or lower the chair and the patient. In the more agreeable situation at the theatre or concert one may hang his hat on the bottom of the chair, upturned to afford access to it through a crowded row, and turning down the chair, sit with pleasure, as the curtain is rolled up by compressed air, or electricity, at the touch of a button. To the unthinking and unobserving, the subject of _bottle stoppers_ is not entrancing, but those acquainted with the art know with what long, continuous, earnest efforts, thousands of inventors have sought for the best and cheapest bottle stopper to take the place of corks--the enormous demand for which was exhausting the supply and rendering their price almost prohibitive. One of the most successful types is a stopper of rubber combined with a metal disk, and hung by a wire on the neck of the bottle, so that the stopper can be used over and over again; another form composed of glass, or porcelain, and cork; another is a thin disk of cork placed in a thin metal cap which is crimped over a shoulder on the neck of the bottle, and still another is a thin disk of pasteboard adapted for milk bottles and pressed tightly within a rim on the inside of the neck of the bottle.