made of cork; and in water-proof garments this material is preferable to India-rubber, in that it allows a freer passage to the air.
Among other miscellaneous applications, may be named those for prosthesis in surgery, naturalists' blocks, rolling-pins for pastry, bath-landings, and wine-labels. The facility with which it is cut, makes cork available for fanciful works of art, as in landscape combinations,
Fig. 11.—Cork Jacket and Life-Buoy.
models of monuments, cases for inclosing bottles to be mailed, spools for silk, the inkstands of our fathers' childhood; pen-holders, which being large and light, do not cramp the fingers, and hundreds of other articles of the kind. There is hardly a profession that does not make more or less use of cork. Gold-burnishers make their rubbers from it, and crystal-polishers their wheel-surfaces. It forms a very light and convenient mounting for watch-makers' lenses, which is used with a minimum amount of fatigue to the muscles of the eye. Applied as a tire to pulley-wheels, it secures a firmer adhesion of the bands. The stoppers of sucking-bottles have been replaced by cork tips which, being very cheap, can be renewed when the presence of a ferment in them is suspected. Cork is also used in a great many children's toys and plays; in fixing wigs on the heads of dolls; in toy guns and pistols; in shuttlecocks and skittles to be played in rooms. In fact, one is almost tempted to inquire to what use it can not be put.
