labels on forty papers. The labelling is done in the latter part of winter and early spring. =224. Pens= (STEEL AND QUILL). A thousand million steel pens are said to be produced annually at Birmingham, England. We are indebted to some writer in an English paper for a description of the part taken by women in the manufacture of Gillott's pen in Birmingham. The number of women employed in his factory is four hundred. "If not altogether manufactured by woman, she has had, by far, more to do in its manufacture than men. He may have forged and rolled the metal, but she cut it from the sheet, gave it its semi-cylindrical form, stamped it, ground it on a wheel to make it flexible, split it, helped to polish it, and finally packed it in a box, or sewed it upon a card in readiness for the market. And whoever wishes to see her thus employed, may find her seated in an airy and comfortable chamber, with two hundred or three hundred companions similarly engaged--all healthy and merry, and singing at their work, while pens in all stages are clicking and glittering through their fingers at the rate of something like one hundred gross a day, each." An attempt has been made to manufacture steel pens in this country, but, I think, as yet without success. The makers of the Washington medallion pen had some girls to come from England to work for them, but found they could not keep up the factory, because of the prices they had to pay for labor. The duty on steel pens is thirty per cent., yet they can be imported for less than it would cost to make them here. Some one writes to the editor of the _Englishwoman's Journal_ as follows: "Madam, I have been told that quill pens made by hand are far superior to those made by machinery, and are therefore used in some of the principal offices of London. Besides which, very many persons are unable to write except with quill pens; rejecting the best and most expensive ones made of any kind of metal. Might not the making of them be a suitable occupation for some young women, who, from lameness or other infirmities, might be unable to follow a more active life?" In New York, some quills are made into pens by machinery, but women, we believe, are not employed.