THE MEETING OF APRIL, 1844. 445 



yielded to the intense heat produced by the flame of the blow-pipe. In chemical 

 analysiii, the useful labors of Keating, Vanuxen, Seybert, Booth, Clemson, Litton, 

 and Moss, would fill many volumes. In organic cliemistry, the researches of 

 Clark Hare and Boyd were rewarded by tlie discovery of a new ether, the most 

 explosive compound known to man. Mitchel's experiments on the penetration of 

 membranes by gases, and the ingenious extension of them by Dr. Rogers, are worthy 

 of all praise. The softening of India rubber, by Dr. Mitchell, renders it a most 

 useful article. Dyer's discovery of soda ash yielded him a competence. Our 

 countrymen have also made most valuable improvements in refining sugnr, in the 

 manufacture of lard oil, and stearin candies, and the preservation of timber by 

 Earle's process. Sugar and molasses have been extracted in our country from the 

 corn stalk, but with what, if any profit, as to either, is not yet determined. No 

 part of mechanics has produced such surprising results as the steam engine, and 

 our countrymen have been among the foremost and most distinguished in this great 

 and progressive branch. When Rumsey, of Pennsylvania, made a steamboat which 

 moved against the current of tlie James river four miles an hour, his acliievement 

 was so much in advance of the age, as to acquire no public confidence. When 

 John Fitch's boat stemmed the current of the Delaware, contending successfully 

 with sail boats, it was called, in derision, the scheme boat. So the New Yorkers. 

 When the steamboat of their own truly great mechanic, Stevens, after making a 

 trip from Iloboken, burnt accidentally one of its boiler tubes, it was proclaimed a 

 failure. Fulton also encountered unbounded ridicule and opposition, as he ad- 

 vanced to confer the greatest benefits on mankind, by the application of steam to 

 navigation. So Oliver Evans, of Pennsylvania, (who has made such useful im. 

 provements in the flour mill,) was pronounced insane, when ho applied to the Legis- 

 latures of Pennsylvania and Maryland for special privileges in regard to the appli- 

 cation of steam to locomotion on common roads. In 1810, he was escorted by a 

 mob of boys, when his amphibolas was moved on wheels by steam more than a 

 mile through the streets of Philadelphia, to the river Schuylkill, and there, taking 

 to the water, was paddled by steam to the wharves of the Delaware, where it was 

 to work as a dredging machine. Fulton's was the first successful steamboat, Ste- 

 vens's the first that navigated the ocean, Oliver Evans's the first high-pressure engine 

 applied to steam navigation. Stevens's boat, by an accident, did not precede Ful- 

 ton's, and Stevens's engine was wholly American, and constructed entirely by him- 

 self, and his propeller resembled much to that now introduced by Ericsson. Stevens 

 united the highest mechanical skill with a bold, original, inventive genius. His 

 sons, (especially Mr. Robert L. Stevens, of New York,) have inherited much of the 

 extraordinary skill and talent of their distinguished father. The first steamboat 

 that ever crossed the ocean was built by one of our countrymen, and their skill in 

 naval architecture has been put in requisition by the Emperor of Russia and tho 

 Sultan of Turkey. The steam machines invented by our countrymen to drive piles, 

 load vessels, and excavate roads, are most ingenious and useful. The use of steam, 

 as a locomotive power, upon the water and tho land, is admirably adapted to our 

 mighty rivers and extended territory. From Washington to the mouth of tho 

 Orogon is but one half, and to tho mouth of the Del Norte but one fourth, of the 

 distance of the railroads already constructed here; and to the latter point, at the 

 rate of motion (thirty miles an hour) now in daily use abroad, the trip would be 

 performed in two days, and to the former in four days. Thus steam, if wo measure 

 dislimce by tho time in which it is traversed, renders our whole Union, with its 



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