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85 GENERAL REMARKS ON FILLING.

premise that, for the manufacture of the best quality
of foil, perfectly pure gold is indispensable. The
gold is cast into an ingot about an inch wide, which
is placed between a pair of rollers, and rolled down

as thin as practicable, the piece, while rolling, being
frequently annealed. It is then cut into squares,
which are inserted with wooden pliers between vel-
lum leaves, a hundred and sixty or seventy in a
pack. Over this pack two pockets are drawn, in-
closing it completely. The pack then is hammered
on a marble block, with a hammer weighing twelve

or sixteen pounds, till the leaves are spread out to
the full extent of the pack. Much experience and
skill are requisite to the proper accomplishment of
this part of the work : by a single unskillful stroke of
the hammer, a whole pack might be spoiled.
Gold foil is numbered according to the grains con-
tained in each leaf, ranging from 2 to 30. The most
common numbers are, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 15, 20, and
30, the smaller, from 2 to 6, being in most frequent
use. It has heretofore been a desideratum to obtain
gold foil perfectly uniform; but some few manufac-

turers now seem to have attained this perfection.
Crystal Gold.—This form of gold was introduced to
the profession about fourteen years ago. Some ex-
periments in this direction, indeed, had been made as
early as 1825, by C. Ash, of London, and again in