sand or metal are adjusted in the proper places when the article is required to be cast hollow (brass cocks, for instance), and also iron rails intended to have brass heads cast on them, or such other articles of iron as are required to be solidly united with the brass. The faces of both halves are now finally dusted with waste flour or meal dust; the two halves are then replaced upon each other, and the box is fixed together by screw clamps. The moulds for _fine castings_ (articles with ornamental surfaces, as screens, sconces, bell-levers, &c.) are faced with various fine substances, such as charcoal, loamstone, rottenstone, &c. that they may retain a sharp impression; after which they are most carefully dried. For ordinary work it is generally considered better that the sand should retain a little moisture, though great care must be taken in this respect, to guard against the danger of explosion. [Illustration: Braces. Set Moulds. Cores.] The _mould_ then is a square frame, mostly of iron, filled with peculiar dark red sand, which is pressed into a firm mass, in which the patterns of the casting are imbedded and their perfect shape impressed. The casters work at a large _trough_ filled with the sand, and the workshop, with its forge, has some resemblance to a bakehouse where black bread is being kneaded into loaves. The first mould is made for what is called the “odd side” of the pattern—that is to say (in solid castings), the lower, or inferior side—and this serves as a sort of pattern to which the moulder refers in fine castings. The pattern being lifted off or out as soon as the sand-mould is sufficiently solid, the whole surface, in which the chasing of the pattern is clearly defined, is dusted with bean-floor or pounded “pot” first, and afterwards with loam, sand, charcoal, or coal-dust. This has the effect of making a smooth surface, and effectually filling the interstices in the sand, so as to prevent any raggedness in the casting. Each mould, or rather the two sides of the mould, are then placed near the surface and slightly baked, a channel having been made in the edge of each for conducting the melted metal to the pattern. The two sides are then placed together and held firmly by their pins and sockets, and the mould is ready for the casting. The “pots,” or crucibles of greyish clay, which turn red by the action of the fire, are in the furnaces like so many tall flower-pots. The dirty yellowish brass ingots, made on the premises at a large mixing furnace, having been first placed across the tops of the pots, that they may expand before being melted, are about twenty minutes afterwards reduced to a molten mass, above which hovers a light sea-green flame mingled with streaks of brilliant colour, like the water from a dyehouse; meanwhile the moulds have been placed in a slanting position, with the opening in the side upwards, against a bank of sand or brickwork, and everything is prepared for pouring.