the method of manufacture nails fall into four principal classes: (1) hand-wrought nails; (2) machine-wrought and cut nails; (3) wire or French nails; and (4) cast nails.
The nailer handicraft was formerly a great industry in the country around Birmingham. The nails are forged from nail-rods heated in a small smith’s hearth, hammered on an anvil, the nail length cut off on a chisel and the head formed by dropping the spike into a hole in a “bolster” of steel, from which enough of the spike is left projecting to form the head. In the case of clasp nails the head is formed with two strokes of the hammer, while rose nails require four. The heads of the larger-sized nails are made with an “oliver” or mechanical hammer, and for ornamental or stamped heads “swages” or dies are employed. The conditions of life and labour among the hand nailers in England were exceedingly unsatisfactory: married women and young children of both sexes working long hours in small filthy sheds attached to their dwellings; their employment was controlled by middle-men or nail-masters, who supplied them with the nail-rods and paid for work done, sometimes in money and sometimes in kind on the truck system. Machine-wrought and cut nails have supplanted most corresponding kinds of hand-made nails. Horse nails are still made by hand-labour. These are made from the finest Swedish charcoal iron, hammered out to a sharp point. They must be tough and homogeneous throughout, so that there may be no danger of their breaking over and leaving portions in the hoof.
In 1617 Sir D. Bulmer devised a machine for cutting nail-rods, and in 1790 T. Clifford patented a device for shaping the rods, but the credit of perfecting machinery mainly belongs to American enterprise (the first American patent appears to be that of Ezekiel Reed, dated 1786). The machine, fed with heated (to black heat only) strips of metal, usually mild steel, having a breadth and thickness sufficient for the nail to be made, shears off by its slicer the “nail blank,” which, falling down, is firmly clutched at the neck till a heading die strikes against its upper end and forms the head, the completed nail passing out through an inclined shoot. In large nails the taper of the shank and point is secured by the sectional form to which the strips are rolled; brads, sprigs and small nails, on the other hand, are cut from uniform strips in an angular direction from head to point, the strip being turned over after each blank is cut so that the points and heads are taken from opposite sides alternately, and a uniform taper on two opposite sides of the nail, from head to point, is secured. The machines turn out nails with wonderful rapidity, varying with the size of the nails produced from about 100 to 1000 per minute. Wire or French nails are made from round wire, which is unwound, straightened, cut into lengths and headed by a machine either by intermittent blows or by pressure, but the pointing is accomplished by the pressure of dies. Cast nails, which are cast in sand moulds by the ordinary process, are used principally for horticultural purposes, and the hob-nails or tackets of shoemakers are also cast.
See Peter Barlow, Encyclopaedia of Arts, Manufactures and Machinery (1848); Bucknall Smith, Wire, Its Manufacture and Uses (New York, 1891).
NAIL VIOLIN (Ger. Nagelgeige, Nagelharmonica), a musical curiosity invented by Johann Wilde, a musician in the imperial orchestra at St Petersburg. The nail violin or harmonica consists of a wooden soundboard about 112 ft. long and 1 ft. wide bent into a semicircle. In this soundboard are fixed a number of iron or brass nails of different lengths, tuned to give a chromatic scale. Sound is produced by friction with a strong bow, strung with black horsehair. An improved instrument, now in the collection of the Hochschule in Berlin, has two half-moon sound-chests of different sizes, one on the top of the other, forming terraces. In the rounded wall of the upper sound-chest are two rows of iron staples, the upper giving the diatonic scale, and the lower the intermediate chromatic semitones. History records the name of a single virtuoso on this instrument, which has a sweet bell-like tone but limited technical possibilities; he was a Bohemian musician called Senal, who travelled all over Germany with his instrument about 1780–1790. (K. S.)
NAINI TAL, a town and district of British India, in the Kumaon division of the United Provinces. The town is 6400 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) 7609. Naini Tal is a popular sanatorium for the residents in the plains, and the summer headquarters of the government of the province. It is situated on a lake, surrounded by high mountains, and is subject to landslides; a serious catastrophe of this kind occurred in September 1880. The approach from the plains is by the Rohilkhand and Kumaon railway from Bareilly, which has its terminus at Kathgodam, 22 m. distant by cart road. There are several European schools, besides barracks and convalescent depôt for European soldiers.
The District of Naini Tal comprises the lower hills of Kumaon and the adjoining Tarai or submontane strip. Area, 2677 sq. m. Pop. (1901) 311,237, showing a decrease of 15.4% in the decade. The district includes the Gagar and other foothills of the Himalayas, which reach an extreme height of nearly 9000 ft. The Bhabar tract at their base consists of boulders from the mountains, among which the hill streams are swallowed up. Forests cover vast tracts of the hill-country and the Bhabar. Beyond this is the Tarai, moist and extremely unhealthy. Here the principal crops are rice and wheat. In the hills a small amount of tea is grown, and a considerable quantity of fruit. The only railway is the line to Kathgodam.
See Naini Tal District Gazetteer (Allahabad, 1904).
NAIRN, a royal, municipal and police burgh and county town of Nairnshire, Scotland. Pop. of the royal burgh (1901) 5089. It is situated on the Moray Firth, at the mouth of the Nairn and on its left bank, 1514 m. N.E. of Inverness by the Highland railway. The town, though of immemorial age, shows no signs of its antiquity, being bright, neat and modern. It attracts many summer visitors by its good sea bathing and excellent golf-course. The industries include salmon fishing, deep-sea fishing, the making of rope and twine and the freestone quarries of the neighbourhood. There is a commodious harbour with breakwater and pier. Nairn belongs to the Inverness district group of parliamentary burghs (Forres, Fortrose, Inverness and Nairn). Nairn was originally called Invernarne (the mouth of the Nairn). It was made a royal burgh by Alexander I. (d. 1124), but this charter having been lost it was confirmed by James VI. in 1589.
NAIRNE, CAROLINA, Baroness (1766–1845), Scottish song writer, was born in the “auld hoose” of Gask, Perthshire, on the 16th of August 1766. She was descended from an old family which had settled in Perthshire in the 13th century, and could boast of kinship with the royal race of Scotland. Her father, Laurence Oliphant, was one of the foremost supporters of the Jacobite cause, and she was named Carolina in memory of Prince Charles Edward. In the schoolroom she was known as “pretty Miss Car,” and afterwards her striking beauty and pleasing manners earned for her the name of the “Flower of Strathearn.” In 1806 she married W. M. Nairne, who became Baron Nairne (see below) in 1824. Following the example set by Burns in the Scots Musical Museum, she undertook to bring out a collection of national airs set to appropriate words. To the collection she contributed a large number of original songs, adopting the signature “B. B.” —“Mrs Bogan of Bogan.” The music was edited by R. A. Smith, and the collection was published at Edinburgh under the name of the Scottish Minstrel (1821–1824). After her husband’s death in 1830 Lady Nairne took up her residence at Enniskerry, Co. Wicklow, but she spent much time abroad. She died at Gask on the 26th of October 1845.
Her songs may be classed under three heads: (1) those illustrative of the characters and manners of the old Scottish gentry, such as “The Laird o’ Cockpen,” “The Fife Laird,” and “John Tod”; (2) Jacobite songs, composed for the most part to gratify her kinsman Robertson, the aged chief of Strowan, among the best known of which are perhaps “Wha’ll be King but Charlie?” “Charlie is my darling,” “The Hundred Pipers,” “He’s owre the Hills,” and “Bonnie Charlie’s noo awa”; and (3) songs not included under the above heads, ranging over a variety of subjects from “Caller Herrin'” to the “Land o’ the
