232 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
L. M. Rutherfurd on May 2, 1864, as the committee. The com- 
mittee visited the Brooklyn Navy Yard and made a painstaking 
examination of the boilers, “ one of the committee having entered 
the boilers and made a minute and thorough examination of 
their internal condition.” The detailed report submitted on 
August 5, 1864, contains the following conclusion; “ The com- 
mittee are unanimously of opinion that the rupture of the shell 
of the boiler of the Chenango was caused by the insufficiency 
of the vertical stays, by which the top of the boiler was fastened 
to the tube-boxes to withstand the pressure for which the boiler 
was intended, and that these stays were both deficient in number 
and injudiciously arranged,” and again “ the committee are of 
opinion that the boiler was not braced in accordance with the 
specifications, and that this difference was the cause of the dis- 
aster.” ** ‘This report clearly throws the main responsibility for 
the accident on the private constructors rather than on the 
engineers of the Navy Department, though it would seem that 
the Government inspectors were not entirely absolved thereby. 
As a slight concession to the makers of the boilers, the committee 
in closing points out a certain fault in the specifications which 
they had corrected. 
COMMITTEE ON GALVANIC ACTION FROM ASSOCIATION OF 
ZINC AND IRON. 1867 
At the close of the Civil War and for some years afterwards 
the headstones which marked the graves of soldiers in the 
national military cemeteries consisted for the most part of 
wooden blocks, painted white, with the names of the soldiers, the 
numbers of the regiments to which they belonged, and other 
data in black lettering. It was felt both by the Government and 
by the general public that these perishable marks should be re- 
placed by others of an enduring character before the records 
which they bore should become obliterated. 
It was determined by the War Department, probably on 
the recommendation of General Meigs, Quartermaster-General, 
Rep. Nat. Acad. Sci. for 1864, p. 13. 
