orks in glass fountains,
candelabra, &c., that the world has ever seen have been made at Messrs.
Oslers, Broad Street, whose show rooms are always open to visitors.

_Guns_.--The imitative, if not inventive, powers of our forefathers have
been shown in so many instances, that it is not surprising we have no
absolute record of the first gun-maker, when he lived, or where he
worked, but we may be confident that firearms were not long in use
before they were manufactured here. The men who made 15,000 swords for
the Commonwealth were not likely to go far for the "musquets" with which
they opposed Prince Rupert. The honour of procuring the first Government
contract for guns rests with Sir Richard Newdigate, one of the members
for the county in William III.'s reign, a trial order being given in
1692, followed by a contract for 2,400 in 1693, at 17/-each. For the
next hundred years the trade progressed until the Government, in 1798,
found it necessary to erect "view-rooms" (now "the Tower", Bagot Street)
in Birmingham. From 1804 to 1817 the number of muskets, rifles,
carbines, and pistols made here for the Government, amounted to
1,827,889, in addition to 3,037,644 barrels and 2,879,203 locks sent to
be "set up" in London, and more than 1,000,000 supplied to the East
India Co. In the ten years ending 1864 (including the Crimean War) over
4,000,000 military barrels were proved in this town, and it has been
estimated that during the American civil war our quarreling cousins were
supplied with 800,000 weapons from our workshops. Gunstocks are chiefly
made from beech and walnut, the latter for military and best work, the
other being used principally for the African trade, wherein the prices
have ranged as low as 6s. 6d. per gun. Walnut wood is nearly all
imported, Germany and Italy being the principal markets;--during the
Crimean war one of our manufacturers set up sawmills at Turin, and it is
stated that before he closed them he had used up nearly 10,000 trees,
averaging not more than thirty gunstocks from each. To give anything
like a history of the expansion of, and changes in, the gun trade during
the last fifteen years, would require a volume devoted solely to the
subject, but it may not be uninteresting to enumerate the manifold
branches into which the trade has been divided--till late years most of
them being carried on under different roofs:--The first portion, or
"makers", include--stock-makers, barrel welders, borers, gri