The ladies soon adopted the fashion, but as watches were still very expensive, mock watches were often substituted.
Minute Mechanisms.
There is a cherry stone at the Salem (Mass.) Museum which contains one dozen silver spoons. The stone itself is of the ordinary size, but the spoons are so small that their shape and finish can only be distinguished by the microscope. Dr. Oliver gives an account of a cherry stone on which were carved one hundred and twenty-four heads, so distinctly that the naked eye could distinguish those belonging to popes and kings by their mitres and crowns. It was bought in Prussia for fifteen thousand dollars, and thence conveyed to England, where it was considered an object of so much value that its possession was disputed, and it became the subject of a suit in chancery. One of the Nuremberg toy-makers enclosed in a cherry stone, which was exhibited at the French Crystal Palace, a plan of Sevastopol, a railway station, and the "Messiah" of Klopstock. In more remote times, an account is given of an ivory chariot, constructed by Mermecides, which was so small that a fly could cover it with its wing; also a ship of the same material, which could be hidden under the wing of a bee. Pliny tells us that Homer's Iliad, with its fifteen thousand verses, was written in so small a space as to be contained in a nutshell; while Elian mentions an artist who wrote a distich in letters of gold, which he enclosed in the rind of a kernel of corn. But the Harleian MS. mentions a greater curiosity than any of the former, it being nothing more nor less than the Bible, written by one Peter Bales, a chancery clerk, in so small a book that it could be enclosed within the shell of an English walnut. There is a drawing of the head of Charles II. in the library of St. John's College, Oxford, wholly composed of minutely written characters, which at a short distance resemble the lines of an ordinary engraving. The head and ruff are said to contain the book of Psalms, in Greek, and the Lord's Prayer.—Bombaugh.
Wonderful Lock.
Among the wonderful products of art in the French Crystal Palace was shown a lock which admitted of 3,674,385 combinations. Heuret spent one hundred and twenty nights in locking it; Fichet was four months in unlocking it; afterwards they could neither shut nor open it.
Roman Stamp.
This curiosity is preserved in the British Museum. It is the very earliest specimen of printing by means of ink or any similar substance. It is made of metal, a sort of Roman brass, the ground of which is covered with a green kind of verdigris rust with which antique medals are usually covered. The letters rise flush up to the elevation of the exterior rim which surrounds it. Its dimensions are about two inches long by one inch broad. At the back of it is a small ring for the finger, to make it more convenient to hold. As no person of the name which is inscribed upon it is mentioned in Roman history, he is, therefore, supposed to have been a functionary of some Roman officer, or private steward, who, perhaps, used this stamp to save himself the trouble of writing his name.