mical Manufactures_.--About 50,000 tons of soda, soup, bleaching
powder, oil of vitriol, muriatic acid, sulphuric acid, &c., are
manufactured in or near Birmingham, every year, more than 20,000 tons of
salt, 20,000 tons of pyrites, and 60,000 tons of coal being used in the
process.

_China_, in the shape of knobs, &c., was introduced into the brass
founding trade by Harcourt Bros, in 1844. China bowls or wheels for
castors were first used in 1849 by J.B. Geithner.

_Chlorine_.--James Watt was one of the first to introduce the use of
chlorine as a bleaching agent.

_Citric Acid_.--Messrs. Sturge have over sixty years been manufacturing
this pleasant and useful commodity at their works in Wheeley's Lane. The
acid is extracted from the juice of the citron, the lime, and the lemon,
fruits grown in Sicily and the West Indies. The Mountserrat Lime-Juice
Cordial, lately brought into the market, is also made from these fruits.
About 350 tons of the acid, which is used in some dying processes, &c.,
is sent out annually.

_Coins, Tokens, and Medals_.--Let other towns and cities claim
preeminence for what they may, few will deny Birmingham's right to stand
high in the list of money-making places. At what date it acquired its
evil renown for the manufacture of base coin it would be hard to tell,
but it must have been long prior to the Revolution of 1688, as in some
verses printed in 1682, respecting the Shaftesbury medal, it is thus
sneeringly alluded to:

"The wretch that stamped got immortal fame,
'Twas coined by stealth, like groats in Birminghame."

Smiles, in his lives of Boulton and Watt, referring to the middle of the
last century, says, "One of the grimmest sights of those days were the
skeletons of convicted coiners dangling from gibbets on Handsworth
Heath." Coining was a capital offence for hundreds of years, but more
poor wretches paid the penalty of their crimes in London in a single
year than here in a century, wicked as the bad boys of Brummagem were.
An immense trade was certainly done in the way of manufacturing
"tokens," but comparatively few counterfeits of the legal currency were
issued, except in cases where "a royal patent" had been granted for the
purpose, as in the instance of the historical "Wood's half-pence,"
L100,000 worth (nominal) of which, it is said, were issued for
circulation in Ireland. These were called in, as being too bad, even for
Paddy's land, and probably it was some of these