"Why, mother," exclaimed Bob, "you didn't surely expect to see two large
holes in it for a giant's thumb and fingers, did you?"

"Well, but," said Mrs Marrot, "it ain't got no blades that I can see."

"I'll let 'ee see 'em, Missis, in a minute," said a workman who came up
at that moment with a plate of iron more than a quarter of an inch
thick. "Turn it on, Johnny."

A small boy turned on the steam, the machine moved, and Will Garvie
pointed out to Mrs Marrot the fact that two sharp edges of steel in a
certain part of it crossed each other exactly in the manner of a pair of
scissors.

"Well," remarked Mrs M, after contemplating it for some time, "it don't
look very like scissors, but I'm free to confess that them two bits of
iron _do_ act much in the same way."

"And with the same result, Missus," observed the machine-man, putting
the plate between the clippers, which, closing quietly, snipped off
about a foot of iron as if it had been paper. There was, however, a
crunching sound which indicated great power, and drew from Mrs Marrot
an exclamation of surprise not altogether unmingled with alarm.

The man then seized a bit of iron about as thick as his own wrist--full
an inch and a half in diameter--which the scissors cut up into lengths
of eighteen inches or so as easily as if it had been a bar of lead or
wood.

"Didn't I say it could cut through the poker, mother?" cried Bob with a
look of triumph.

"The poker, boy! it could cut poker, tongs, shovel, and fender, all at
once!" replied Mrs Marrot--"well, I never! can it do anything else?"

In reply to this the man took up several pieces of hard steel, which it
snipped through as easily as it had cut the iron.

But if Mrs Marrot's surprise at the scissors was great, not less great
was it at the punching machine, which punched little buttons the size of
a sixpence out of cold iron full half-an-inch thick. This vicious
implement not only punched holes all round boiler-plates so as to permit
of their being riveted together, but it cut patterns out of thick iron
plates by punching rows of such holes so close to each other that they
formed one long cutting, straight or crooked, as might be required. In
short, the punching machine acted the part of a saw, and cut the iron
plates in any shape that was desired. Here also they saw the testing of
engine springs--those springs which to most people appear to have no
spring in them whatever--so very powerful are the