lock of cocoa, held by
machinery, advances with a slow continuous motion, until it touches
the blades on the wheel, when immediately a cloud of most delicate
slices or shavings is thrown off, as rapidly as sparks from a
knife-grinder's wheel. Cake after cake is thus comminuted, at the rate
of a ton per day from a single machine. The shavings are collected as
fast as they fall, and passed through a sieve, which reduces them to
that coarse powdery form so well known to all consumers of soluble
chocolate. It is then put into barrels, and despatched without delay
to the packing-room by means of a railway.

That there is something in a name, is as true of cocoa and chocolate
as of other things, and the difference of name implies, in most
instances, a difference of manufacture. Hence there is a variety of
processes going on within the building, the results of which are shewn
in 'Cocoa Paste,' 'Rock Cocoa,' 'Eating Vanilla Chocolate,' 'Penny
Chocolate,' 'French Bonbons,' 'Flaked Cocoa,' 'Homoeopathic,' &c. So
numerous are the sorts, that a purchaser is as much puzzled in his
choice as an untravelled Cockney with a Parisian bill of fare. The
making of the flaked cocoa is peculiarly interesting, and is, we were
informed, peculiar to this establishment. To see how the amorphous
mass comes from the mill in long curling ribbons, uniform in thickness
and texture, is a sight that provokes astonishment, as much by the
rapidity of the operation as by the ease with which it appears to be
accomplished, but which has only been arrived at by a persevering
circumvention of vexatious difficulties.

But however interesting the results, one grows tired at length of the
noise and clatter of machinery; and it was with a feeling of relief
that we mounted to the packing-room, where all was so light, cheerful,
and orderly, as to prove that the good management everywhere
perceptible had here put on its pleasantest expression. The most
perfect cleanliness prevails. The half-score or more of girls, who
work under the superintendence of a forewoman, are all dressed in
clean Holland pinafores--an industrial uniform. All were packing as
busily as hands could work: one weighed the cocoa; a second placed the
paper in the mould, and turned the cocoa into it; a third compressed
the contents by means of a machine-moved plunger; while a fourth
released the packet, pasted down the loose ends, and laid it aside.
This party, by their combined operations, weigh