[Probably one of the most amusing articles in Mr. Macculloch's
bulky _Dictionary of Commerce_ of 1,150 pages, is the
following account of the manufacture of the celebrated
Laurencekirk snuff-boxes. It is right, however, to explain,
that Mr. Macculloch only mentions these boxes here for the
purpose of giving the following details, not to be met with in
any other publication.]

These beautiful boxes were first manufactured at the village of
Laurencekirk, in Kincardineshire, about forty years since. The
original inventer was a cripple hardly possessed of the power of
locomotion. In place of curtains, his bed (rather a curious workshop)
was surrounded with benches and receptacles for tools, in the
contrivance and use of which he discovered the utmost ingenuity. The
inventer, instead of taking out a patent, confided his secret to a
joiner in the same village, who in a few years amassed a considerable
property; while the other died, as he had lived, in the greatest
poverty. The great difficulty of the manufacture lies in the formation
of the hinge, which in a genuine box is so delicately made as hardly
to be visible. Peculiar, or, as they are called, secret tools are
required in its formation; and though they must have been improved
by time and experience, the mystery attached to their preparation is
still so studiously kept up, that the workmen employed in one shop are
rigorously debarred from having any communication with those employed
in another.

About the beginning of this century, an ingenious individual belonging
to the village of Cumnock, in Ayrshire, of the name of Crawford,
having seen one of the Laurencekirk snuff-boxes, succeeded, after