an article in dress, whose form and use are too well known to need description. They are made of various materials, as mohair, silk, horse hair, metal, &c.

Method of making common BUTTONS. Common buttons are generally made of mohair; some indeed are made of silk, and others of thread; but the latter are of a very inferior sort. In order to make a button, the mohair must be previously wound on a bobbin; and the mould fixed to a board by means of a bodkin thrust through the hole in the middle of it. This being done, the workman wraps the mohair round the mould in three, four, or six columns, according to the button.

Horse-hair BUTTONS. The moulds of these buttons are covered with a kind of stuff composed of silk and horse hair; the warp being belladine silk, and the shoot horse hair. This stuff is woven with two selvages, in the same manner and in the same loom as ribbands. It is then cut into square pieces proportional to the size of the button, wrapped round the moulds, and the selvages stitched together, which form the under part of the button.

Cleaning of BUTTONS. A button is not finished when it comes from the maker's hands; the superfluous hair and hubs of silk must be taken off, and the button rendered glossy and beautiful before it can be sold. This is done in the following manner: A quantity of buttons are put into a kind of iron sieve, called by workmen a finger box. Then a little spirit of wine being poured into a kind of shallow iron dish, and set on fire, the workman moves and shakes the finger box, containing the buttons, briskly over the flame of the spirit, by which the superfluous hairs, hubs of silk, &c. are burnt off, without damaging the buttons. Great care, however, must be taken that the buttons in the finger box be kept continually in motion; for if they are suffered to rest over the flame, they will immediately burn. When all these loose hairs, &c. are burnt off by the flame of the spirit, the buttons are taken out of the finger box, and put, with a proper quantity of the crumbs of bread, into a leather bag, about three feet long, and of a conical shape; the mouth or smaller end of which being tied up, the workman takes one of the ends in one hand and the other in the other, and shakes the hand briskly with a particular jerk. This operation cleanses the buttons, renders them very glossy, and fit for sale.

Gold-twist BUTTONS. The mould of these buttons is first covered in the same manner with that of common buttons. This being done, the whole is covered with a thin plate of gold or silver, and then wrought over of different forms, with purple and gimp. The former is a kind of thread composed of silk and gold wire twisted together; and the latter, capillary tubes of gold or silver, about the tenth of an inch long. These are joined together by means of a fine needle, filled with silk, thrust through their apertures, in the same manner as beads or bugles.

The manner of making Metal BUTTONS. The metal with which the moulds are intended to be covered is first cast into small ingots, and then flattened into thin plates or leaves, of the thickness intended, at the flattening mills; after which it is cut into small round pieces proportionate to the size of the mould they are intended to cover, by means of proper punches on a block of wood covered with a thick plate of lead. Each piece of metal thus cut out of the plate is reduced into the form of a button, by beating it successively in several cavities, or concave moulds, of a spherical form, with a convex punch of iron, always beginning with the shallowest cavity of the mould, and proceeding to the deeper, till the plate has acquired the intended form; and the better to manage so thin a plate, they form ten, twelve, and sometimes even twenty-four, to the cavities, or concave moulds, at once; often sealing the metal during the operation, to make it more ductile. This plate is generally called by workmen the cap of the button.

The form being thus given to the plates or caps, they strike the intended impression on the convex side, by means of a similar iron punchon, in a kind of mould engraven en creux, either by the hammer or the press used in coining. The cavity or mould, wherein the impression is to be made, is of a diameter and depth suitable to the form of button intended to be struck in it; each kind requiring a particular mould. Between the punchon and the plate is placed a thin piece of lead, called by workmen a hob, which greatly contributes to the taking off all the strokes of the engraving; the lead, by reason of its softness, easily giving way to the parts that have relief, and as easily insinuating itself into the traces or indentures.

The plate thus prepared makes the cap or shell of the button. The lower part is formed of another plate, in the same manner, but much flatter, and without any impression. To the last or under plate is soldered a small eye made of wire, by which the button is to be fastened.

The two plates being thus finished, they are soldered together with soft solder, and then turned in a lathe. Generally indeed they use a wooden mould, instead of the under plate; and in order to fasten it, they pass a thread or gut aerolis through the middle of the mould, and fill the cavity between the mould and the cap with cement, in order to render the button firm and solid; for the cement entering all the cavities formed by the relief of the other side, sustains it, prevents its flattening, and preserves its bole or design.

the manege. Button of the reins of a bridle, is a ring of leather, with the reins passed through it, which runs all along the length of the reins. To put a horse under the button, is when a horse is stopped without a rider upon his back, the reins being laid on his neck, and the button lowered so far down that the reins bring in the horse's head, and fix it to the true posture or carriage. It is not only the horses which are managed in the hand that must be put under the button; for the same method must be taken with such horses as are bred between two pillars, before they are backed.

Button-Wood. See Cephalanthus, Botany Index.

Button's-Bay, the name of the north part of Hudson's Bay, in North America, by which Sir Thomas Button attempted to find out a north-west passage to the East Indies. It lies between 80° and 100° west longitude, and between 60° and 66° north latitude.

Button-Stone, in Natural History, a kind of figured stone, so denominated from its resembling the button of a garment. Dr Hook gives the figure of three sorts of button-stones, which seem to have been nothing else but the filling up of three several sorts of shells. They are all of them very hard flints; and have this in common, that they consist of two bodies, which seem to have been the filling up of two holes or vents in the shell. Dr Plot describes a species finely striated from the top, after the manner of some hair buttons. This name is also given to a peculiar species of slate found in the marquisate of Barcith, in a mountain called Fichtelberg; which is extremely different from the common sorts of slate, in that it runs with great ease into glass in five or six hours time, without the addition of any salt or other foreign substance, to promote its vitrification, as other stones require. It contains in itself all the principles of glass, and really has mixed in its substance the things necessary to be added to promote the fusion of other stony bodies. The Swedes and Germans make buttons of the glass produced from it, which is very black and shining, and it has hence its name button-stone. They make several other things also of this glass, as the handles of knives and the like, and send a large quantity of it unwrought in round cakes, as it cools from the fusion, into Holland.