They had lain there unheeded a hundred fifty years; their principle had died with Peter and his workmen; and not many years since, they were reinvented in America, and gave their inventors fame and fortune.

The left hand looper carries the under thread and interweaves it with the upper, forming the stitch, originally invented, I believe, by Mr. George Fisher, of Nottingham, and reinvented for the button holing machine by D.W.G. Humphreys, of Massachusetts, U.S.A., in 1862.