THE VALES OF WORCESTER AND EVESHAM.

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See, there is a barge from the city piled high with hop-pockets. Hops from all the country round are sold at Worcester, or at Stourport, higher up the Severn. There are barges laden with corn-sacks; with apples; with pears; with casks of perry or cider made from apples and pears; with sacks of wool. Yonder is a barge with a delicate freight-the beautiful porcelain made in Worcester, about which we must hear more. The gloves, which employ most of the city work-people, being small and light, are sent away by rail.

There are barges laden with iron things, which come from the north of this county, which is near the Black Country, from Stourbridge or Stourport, on the little river Stour, which there joins the Severn. The carpets of Kidderminster, which is also on the Stour, are generally sent away by rail. There, again, are our old friends the salt barges. Where do they come from? From Droitwich, which is connected with the Severn by a canal, and where there are brine-springs rising from the deep underground salt-bed. Droitwich is a busy, smoky place, where many thousand tons of salt are prepared and sent down the Severn every year; the people of Droitwich have been busy thus, preparing salt, for centuries.

All these barges-many of which, by the way, you are not likely to see at one time—are making their way to Bristol, the great port of the Severn, from which the goods will be sent over sea, or to ports on our own coast. The Severn carries barges and larger vessels all through the county; so does the Avon; and there are canals to enable boats to get to these rivers from places at a distance.

The old cathedral city of Worcester stands in the midst of the fertile Severn Valley. It is a busy town

on market days, for the hops of the district are brought here for sale. The city has manufactures, also, of gloves, and of the beautiful Worcester china.

Our English porcelain is made at the Staffordshire potteries, at Derby, and some other places. That of Worcester has long been noted for its great beauty.

II.

HOW NEEDLES ARE MADE.

Ir is a curious thing that nearly all the needles used in England and the colonies, as well as in a great part of Europe, are made in an out-of-the-way village in a farming county.

The pretty village of Redditch, at the foot of the eastern hills, has about a dozen factories, or mills, where, perhaps, seven or eight thousand persons, men, women, and children, are employed in needle-making. The mills are large buildings, with long rows of windows, like other factories, and with steam-engines to turn the wheels on which the needles are ground. But most of the processes are performed by hand, some of them at the cottages of the needle-makers. Some thirty different things, by thirty different persons, are done to each needle before it is ready for use; and it is marvellous how quick each person is in doing the particular bit of work he is accustomed to do.

Steel wire, of the proper size for needles, is sent from Sheffield to Redditch. A workman takes up about a hundred wires, and, with a strong pair of shears, cuts them into pieces just long enough to make two needles. These are made red-hot in a furnace,

HOW NEEDLES ARE MADE.

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and then rolled over and over with a sort of steel rolling-pin until they are quite straight.

Then the wires go to the pointer, who grinds each end to a sharp point. The pointing-room has many small grindstones, all turning round at a wonderful rate, two thousand times a minute! The grinder sits on a stool, or "horse," and bends over the stone. Over his mouth he wraps a large handkerchief, and as he can do his work nearly as well in the dark as in the light, he is sometimes only to be seen by the bright cone of sparks which come from the steel he is grinding. His face looks pale, and we know he is doing work which will soon kill him. The sparks and the dust from the steel and the grindstone bring on a disease called "grinders' asthma." The grinders get high wages and do but little work, because their calling is so dangerous, though recent inventions have lessened the danger somewhat.

The pointer takes fifty or a hundred needle wires in his hand at once, and twirls them round against the revolving stone. So rapid are his movements that he can point ten thousand wires in an hour.

The next thing is to pierce two holes through each wire-the eyes of the two needles. The wires are laid, one by one, under a heavy stone stamping-machine with a little raised die upon it, the size of a needle's eye, which makes a groove where the eye should be. The workman works his machine with his foot, and places the needle-wire with his hand. Though each has to be done separately, he stamps eight thousand needles in an hour.

Then a boy pierces the eye through, and another boy runs wires through the two holes, so that there is a row of needles on each wire, something like a comb.

The lengths are broken between the two wires, and instead of double, there are single needles.

Next, women and girls straighten them once more with many taps from little hammers. The needles are drilled, tempered, polished; and more is done to them than we have time to describe before they are sorted into packets for sale.

Map Questions.

1. In what direction does the Severn flow through Worcestershire? From what county on the north does it enter? What county does it flow into when it leaves Worcestershire? What is the Severn Valley called in this county? What small tributary joins the river at Stourport? Name four towns on this little river.

2. What hills form part of the eastern boundary? Name three considerable places in the east of Worcestershire.

3. What valley occupies the south-east of the county? Drained by what river? Name a town on the Avon. From what county does it enter? Where does it join the Severn?

4. By what name is the long hill range to the west known in its northern part? In its southern part? What river divides these two? What city stands near the junction of the Teme and Severn? What famous watering-place is among the Malvern Hills?

GLOUCESTERSHIRE.

I.

THE VALES.

GLOUCESTERSHIRE is an easy county to describe; it consists of vales, forest, and hills. The forest lies to the west of the Severn; the vales are, Severn Valley, running through the county, and a bit of the Avon Valley, which crosses it at the north; the hilly country is in the east of the shire.

The bit of Avon Valley, or Vale of Evesham, in the north is, like the same vale in Worcester, green and fertile; and most fertile and beautiful are, also, the two parts of the Severn Valley.

The Severn enters this county at Tewkesbury, which is seventy miles from the sea; yet with such force does the tide-wave from the Atlantic come in, that it is felt thus far up.

Tewkesbury is a busy little town where stockings are made: in a field close by was fought the last battle save one in the long and bitter Wars of the Roses.

Henry VI. was a prisoner in the Tower of London, and Edward IV. had been crowned, when Queen Margaret, the wife of Henry, came over the sea with an army. They sailed up the Severn, and every day old friends joined the queen, who was full of hope; her young son Edward was with her.

But Edward IV. met her at Tewkesbury, and a terrible battle followed. The queen's friends fought