rollers or wheels, lodged
and held in their bearings as accurately as the best mandrill could be,
and having set-screws acting against their ends totally preventing all
end-motion. The machine was bedded on a massive and solid foundation
of masonry in heavy blocks, the support at all points being so complete
as effectually to destroy all tendency to vibration, with the object of
securing full, round, and quiet cuts. The rollers on which the
planing-machine travelled were so true, that Clement himself used to
say of them, "If you were to put but a paper shaving under one of the
rollers, it would at once stop all the rest." Nor was this any
exaggeration--the entire mechanism, notwithstanding its great size,
being as true and accurate as that of a watch.

By an ingenious adaptation of the apparatus, which will also be found
described in the Society of Arts paper, the planing machine might be
fitted with a lathe-bed, either to hold two centres, or a head with a
suitable mandrill. When so fitted, the machine was enabled to do the
work of a turning-lathe, though in a different way, cutting cylinders
or cones in their longitudinal direction perfectly straight, as well as
solids or prisms of any angle, either by the longitudinal or lateral
motion of the cutter; whilst by making the work revolve, it might be
turned as in any other lathe. This ingenious machine, as contrived by
Mr. Clement, therefore represented a complete union of the
turning-lathe with the planing machine and dividing engine, by which
turning of the most complicated kind might readily be executed. For
ten years after it was set in motion, Clement's was the only machine of
the sort available for planing large work; and being consequently very
much in request, it was often kept going night and day,--the earnings
by the planing machine alone during that time forming the principal
income of its inventor. As it took in a piece of work six feet square,
and as his charge for planing was three-halfpence the square inch, or
eighteen shillings the square foot, he could thus earn by his machine
alone some ten pounds for every day's work of twelve hours. We may add
that since planing machines in various forms have become common in
mechanical workshops, the cost of planing does not amount to more than
three-halfpence the square foot.

The excellence of Mr. Clement's tools, and his well-known skill in
designing and executing work requiring unusual accuracy and finis