e in any but round pipes,
but those ought to be uniform. By this process of rolling, great
exactness of shape, and a great degree of smoothness inside, are
preserved.

TILE MACHINES.

Drainage with tiles is a new branch of husbandry in America. The cost of
tiles is now a great obstacle in prosecuting much work of this kind
which land-owners desire to accomplish. The cost of tiles, and so the
cost of drainage, depends very much--it may be said, chiefly--upon the
perfection of the machinery for tile-making; and here, as almost
everywhere else, agriculture and the mechanic arts go hand in hand.
Labor is much dearer in America than in Europe, and there is, therefore,
more occasion here than there, for applying mechanical power to
agriculture. We can have no cheap drainage until we have cheap tiles;
and we can have cheap tiles only by having them made with the most
perfect machinery, and at the lowest prices at which competing
manufacturers, who understand their business, can afford them.

In the preceding remarks on the _cost of tiles_, may be found estimates,
which will satisfy any thinking man that tiles have not yet been sold in
America at reasonably low prices.

To give those who may desire to establish tileries, either for public or
private supply, information, which cannot readily be obtained without
great expense of English books, as to the prices of tile machines, it is
now proposed to give some account of the best English machines, and of
such American inventions as have been brought to notice.

It is of importance that American machinists and inventors should be
apprised of the progress that has been made abroad in perfecting tile
machines; because, as the subject attracts attention, the ingenuity of
the universal Yankee nation will soon be directed toward the discovery
of improvements in all the processes of tile-making. Tiles were made by
hand long before tile machines were invented.

A Mr. Read, in the "Royal Agricultural Journal," claims to have used
_pipe_ tiles as early as 1795, made by hand, and formed on a round
stick. No machine for making tiles is described, before that of Mr.
Beart's, in 1840, by which "common tile and sole (not pipes or tubes)
were made." This machine, however, was of simple structure, and not
adapted to the varieties of tiles now used.

All tile machines seem to operate on the same general principle--that of
forcing wet clay, of the consistency of that used in brick-making,