The kneaded state may be considered the dividing line between the preparatory processes and those which relate to the fashioning of the material. The soft ductile mass may be formed either into sheets or tubes. In forming sheets the mass is passed between steel rollers, placed at a distance apart corresponding with the thickness of the sheet to be made—whether for the heels of a rough-booted pedestrian, or for the delicate “gutta-percha tissue,” now so much employed by surgeons. By the time that the substance has passed through the rollers it has cooled sufficiently to assume a solid, firm consistency. By the adjustment of a few knife edges, the sheet may be cut into bands, or strips of any width, before leaving the machine. In making tubes and pipes, the soft mass of kneaded gutta-percha is passed through heated iron cylinders, where a singular modification of the wire-drawing process reduces it to the desired form and dimensions. From the sheets and tubes thus made, numberless articles are produced by cutting and pressing. Machines, somewhat like those used in cutting paper, are employed to cut the gutta-percha into pieces. If for shoe-soles, a cutting press produces a dozen or so at one movement; if for string, or thread, narrow parallel slips are cut, which are then rounded or finished by hand; if for producing stamped decorative articles, the sheets are cut into pieces, and each piece is warmed and softened to enable it to take the impress of a mould, or die. But the mode of casing copper wire for electro-telegraphic purposes is, perhaps, one of the most singular applications of the material in the form of a sheet. Several wires are laid parallel, a strip of gutta-percha is placed between them, another strip is placed above them, and the whole are passed between two polished grooved rollers; the pressure binds the two surfaces of the gutta-percha firmly together and to the wires, while the edges between the grooves indent the gutta-percha so deeply, that it may easily be separated longitudinally, each slip containing its own core of copper. GUTTA-PERCHA BOATS.