HE flippant remark of the drummer from Philadelphia, that if there were any gnashing of teeth in the other world seventyfive per cent of the gnashing would be done by artificial teeth made in America was not far from the mark. America leads the world in the artificial tooth industry and Philadelphia supplies a large percentage of the total output. False teeth are shipped from this country to the remote corners of the earth. They are to be found in the mouths of Japanese, Chinese, Hindoos, and even, it is very likely, assisting in the mastication of the daily rations of the Zulus of South Africa. Indeed, it is not beyond the limit of possibility that cannibal feasts are conducted with the aid of American-made artificial teeth.

The largest plant in the world for the making of artificial teeth is to be found

in Philadelphia. The industry has grown to its present mammoth proportions within a comparatively short time, for the dentist of old days made the teeth. for his customers in a room adjoining the operating department. They were usually ill-fitting and being made from bone or ivory would not stand the wear long. The discovery of a way to make false teeth by a composition that was practically indestructible marked the beginning of a new era in the ability of the human family to repair the ravages of

time.

The first thing to do in making artificial teeth of a particular variety is to fashion a mould. The greatest care has to be taken in the making of this mould. The work is done by hand, the workmen being highly paid and of the most skilled order. In fact, from the designer to the girls who polish the teeth, the employes of an artificial tooth factory are all of a

superior grade and draw unusually good pay. When the mould has been shaped and tooled to the exact form required, it is filled with the soft composition of which the teeth are made and the cover placed on to press the composition into. the shape of the teeth. The mould is then placed in an oven and the composition baked to a certain point, when it is handed over to an operator who trims off the rough edges and shapes the tooth into the finished article. After that it goes to the furnace for a final and prolonged baking at a tremendous heat.

It must not be supposed that the tooth is finished when it is taken from the furnace. It may be imagined how a tooth would feel if even the minutest part of the surface were rough or over-sharp. The teeth go direct from the furnace to the girls who sit

all day at long tables, examining for defects, and polishing and finishing. The delicate touch of a girl, educated so that the smallest defect is noticed in an instant, is required to prevent any tooth being sent from the factory with an uneven surface or a poor edge. The slightest flaw will cause rejection, for there can be no discomfort

BAKING FALSE TEETH.

worse than that of a sharp or roughedged tooth. The teeth are mounted on cards and brought to the line of girls, and the examiners pass or reject them with incredible swiftness.

When the teeth are finally polished off and ready for shipment they are sent by the million to foreign countries or shipped for domestic use. This is the general trade. By far the most important part of the industry from a scientific point of view is the making of false teeth to order, the fitting out of the faddists who wish their teeth made to a particular pattern and the matching of teeth for those who are desirous of preventing the world knowing that the teeth are false.

Men frequently want teeth made to match their tobacco-stained grinders. Then the coloring work done has to be of an expert order and here again the trained eyes of women are employed, for they have been educated from childhood to match colors and are far better fitted

for such work than men. A large business is done in these tinted teeth and the art of coloring to match samples is quite as important in its way as the making of the teeth to match the shape of the genuine ones.

Sometimes the factory receives an order for what are called "freak teeth," that is teeth so different from those usually found in the human head and of so peculiar a color that the laboratory experts are at work for hours before they can hit upon the right thing. If the toothless customer will pay the price, he or she can have teeth of any shape or color desired, for it is only a question of turning experts loose on the order. But the faddist in false teeth must pay high for, such luxuries. The teeth that are sent out carded by the hundred, are quite a different matter from teeth made to order after the experts of the factory have prepared special moulds and mixed. composition for a single set of teeth.

and the boiling current run side by side in the same bed! It seems a thoughtful provision of Nature in a country where fuel is so scarce thus to assist the women folk.

Every Monday morning the women of Reykjavik go down to the steaming stream with bundles of clothes on their heads, and they wash in common like the women of Switzerland or rural France. How they contrive to protect their children from the boiling pools is a mystery, yet my inquiries failed to elicit a single fatality.

But convenient as this is, it is as nothing to the condition of things prevailing in the North Island of New Zealandthe famous "Wonderland," or Rotorua region. There are hot springs without number, and the queerest sight for the visitor will be the culinary and other domestic operations, not only of the Ma

wabine, or Maori wife, lowering a pudding into a natural steam-hole at Ohine

mutu.

She has sunk a kind of box; and the viands to be cooked are placed on slats of wood at the bottom of this. Next she puts the lid on and covers the whole with sacking; and in an incredibly short while the whole dinner is most perfectly cooked, as though it had the benefit of the most modern cooking appliances. Experts declare that native hams cooked. in this way develop a delicacy of flavor and tenderness unknown elsewhere.

At Whakarewarewa one finds Nature as an aid to the housewife in excelsis. The amount of hot mineral water is enormous; millions of gallons are bubbling and hissing and seething all round, and even if you dig a little hole in the ground with your walking stick it spouts steam and fills with boiling water in a