ute, sufficed to show
how much expertness in the handling of tools will serve to compensate
for their mechanical imperfections. Workmen then sought rather to aid
muscular strength than to supersede it, and mainly to facilitate the
efforts of manual skill. Another tool became added to those mentioned
above, which proved an additional source of power to the workman. We
mean the Saw, which was considered of so much importance that its
inventor was honoured with a place among the gods in the mythology of
the Greeks. This invention is said to have been suggested by the
arrangement of the teeth in the jaw of a serpent, used by Talus the
nephew of Daedalus in dividing a piece of wood. From the
representations of ancient tools found in the paintings at Herculaneum
it appears that the frame-saw used by the ancients very nearly
resembled that still in use; and we are informed that the tools
employed in the carpenters' shops at Nazareth at this day are in most
respects the same as those represented in the buried Roman city.
Another very ancient tool referred to in the Bible and in Homer was the
File, which was used to sharpen weapons and implements. Thus the
Hebrews "had a file for the mattocks, and for the coulters, and for the
forks, and for the axes, and to sharpen the goads." [1] When to these
we add the adze, plane-irons, the anger, and the chisel, we sum up the
tools principally relied on by the early mechanics for working in wood
and iron.

Such continued to be the chief tools in use down almost to our own day.
The smith was at first the principal tool-maker; but special branches
of trade were gradually established, devoted to tool-making. So long,
however, as the workman relied mainly on his dexterity of hand, the
amount of production was comparatively limited; for the number of
skilled workmen was but small. The articles turned out by them, being
the product of tedious manual labour, were too dear to come into common
use, and were made almost exclusively for the richer classes of the
community. It was not until machinery had been invented and become
generally adopted that many of the ordinary articles of necessity and
of comfort were produced in sufficient abundance and at such prices as
enabled them to enter into the consumption of the great body of the
people.

But every improver of tools had a long and difficult battle to fight;
for any improvement in their effective power was sure to touch the
interests o