6 NOTES BY THE EDITOR, 



striking, or wonderful ; no new application of science to art, and no mechan- 

 ical or chemical discovery of striking interest have been announced in the 

 United States during the same period. Notwithstanding, many great plans 

 are now in the process of development, many new ideas are germinating, 

 and many old ones, which have long slumbered in the domains of theory 

 are passing into real, substantial, practical facts. During the year 1852, 

 more than one thousand patents for discoveries, inventions, and applications, 

 " new and useful " were granted by the United States. More than three- 

 fourths of these patents were granted to citizens of the five states of Massa- 

 chusetts, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. As many as 

 three applications for patents from the same sources were probably rejected, 

 where one was granted. The public journals are filled with accounts of the 

 commercial prosperity induced by the gold discoveries of Australia and 

 California ; but the journalists and the public little know how many secret 

 springs and incentives to invention and practical application, the same influx 

 of gold, and the consequent revival of manufactures, has occasioned. 

 There is an intensity of mental action and thought, devoted to the realiza- 

 tion of the useful and the new, now pervading some portions of our country, 

 especially in Massachusetts, the like of which the world has never before 

 witnessed. The American operatives, mechanics and manufacturers, who 

 have in vain sought protection from the National Government, are now 

 creating protection for themselves; educated industry, and skill are rapidly 

 forming a tariff, which in a few years will undoubtedly put foreign compe- 

 tition at defiance. Another curious fact in relation to this subject, is the 

 intensity of competition which the mental activity referred to has engen- 

 dered. An original thought, or a new idea, admitting the possibility of a 

 practical application, when once promulgated becomes common property. 

 A hundred minds at once seize upon it, elaborate it, perfect it. The engines 

 of Ericsson had barely made a successful revolution before an improvement 

 by another was announced in the New York Journals. The U. S. Court 

 were recently occupied at Boston with a closely contested case respeiting 

 the validity of two patents for cotton-gins ; the trial had not concluded 

 before a new gin was put in operation which will undoubtedly render all 

 others valueless. The discussions and experiments in England respecting 

 the manufacture of flax by new processes, have awakened great interest in 

 the subject in the United States, and more is probably known here at pres- 

 ent in relation to this matter, than in Europe. We believe the day is not 

 far distant, when the manufacture of flax will be conducted in the United 

 States upon a most gigantic scale. We turn, however, from these generali- 

 zations to some of the more particular events of the past year. 



The annual meeting of the American Association, for 1852, appointed to 

 be held in Cleveland, in August, was postponed on account of the prevail- 



