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We learn by the " Glasgow Herald," that a monster steam hammer, the largest in the woild, we believe, has recently been erected in an extensive machine works in that city by a Mr. Condie. The frame of this is composed of two cylindrical cast-iron columns of 19 feet long, tapering from 3 feet 5 inches in diameter at the floor line, to 2 feet 3 at the capital, and weighing each 9 tons 13 cwt.— These columns stand apart 23 feet, measuring from centre to centre. On the tops of the columns rests a cast-iron beam, measuring 2 feet 6 inches at its deepest part in the centre, and weighing 6 tons I cwt.; a similar beam, but weighing 7 tons 1 cwt., runs across from column to column at a height of 6 feet 10 inches from the floor line. Between these two beams the guides in which the hammer slides are placed, ech of which weighs 2 tons 5J cwt. The guides and the upper and lower beams and the columns are held firmly together by tie rods that run diagonally from the tops of the columns to the bottom of the slides. The hammer is upwards of 6 tons, exclusive of the face, which is cast separate, and wedged into a dovetailed slot, left for the purpose in the bottom. All parts of this great tool weigh in gross somewhere about 50 tons. The foundation work of such an enormous hammer, with its percussive shock every three or four seconds, was a matter requiring no ordinary forethought.— The whole space under the machine, about 30 feet square, was first, at a great depth below the surface, closely filled with piles 20 feet long and 10 inches in thickness. On the top of these piles there are 400 tons of stones, each three feet in thickness dressed all over, and above this mass lies the anvil block weighing no lessthan iifty-threetons. When this hammer was set up it started with the regularity and smoothness of a piece of the finest watch-work. But when the huge mass of iron composing the hammer came down with its full weight, with a fall of six feet, then the almost volcanic force of the mighty weapon was understood. The shock caused the earth to vibrate for a considerable dis- i tance. The stone-masons in Glasgow, Scotland acting on the advice of Dr. Allison, of Edinburgh, have commenced wearing mustachios as a preservative against the injury done to the system by fine particles of sand, while j they are engaged dressing stones. Custom may be against such natural preventatives ; but if it is found that they are at all beneficial, we deem it the duty of some ot our medical readers to recommend their adoption by millers, bakers, andj)thers similarly exposed. It any curious person be desirous to see what neither he nor the world ever saw before, let him drop in upon Mr. John Taylor, at the end of Tyne Bridge, Eng., who has got, a whole mile, more or less, of tube, without a single joint, made from gutta percha. Such a pipe was never, in any former age, produced of any material whatever.— [Exchange. ,
