proceedings of the polytechnic association. 831 



Machine for Pegging Shoes. 



Mr. J. H. Brown exhibited a machine for pegging shoes ; it 

 makes the pegs and drives them in. This machine can peg a pair 

 of shoes in one minute, and will go round the most uneven soles ; 

 can make the pegs of any length. The pegs are made of birch or 

 maple wood. 



Dr. W. Eowell said that the first pegging machine was made 

 by Thomas Rowell some forty years ago. 



Mr. Porter remarked that this machine would enable small 

 manufacturers to compete with the large ones. The machines, it 

 was thought, could be built for ten dollars ; the other machines 

 for pegging, and which are very complicated, do not cost less than 

 two hundred dollars. 



Professor R. P. Stevens then read the following interesting 

 paper on — 



The Hydrographical Basins of the United States, with 

 THEIR Probable Influence upon its Future Destiny. 



Eli Beaumont, metnber of the French Academy of Science, sit- 

 ting in his cabinet in the city of Paris, first elaborated the propo- 

 sition that all oreat mountain ranges describe definite lines of 

 circles upon the surface of the globe. His theory, whether correct 

 or not in its minor detail, is sufficiently so for our purposes this 

 evening. 



By these upheaved mathematical circles the dry land was made 

 to appear "the waters were gathered into their place," from 

 whence they could arise in invisible vapors, be condensed upon 

 the mountain tops, irrigate their fertile slopes, and, winding 

 through and watering the valleys, find their way back to their 

 parent source. 



The earth was thus made capable of sustaining vegetation, and 

 consequently animal life, and finally to give homes, and fields, and 

 food to the human family. 



Hydrographical basins, are, then, the first elements to consider 

 in the economy of nations. 



The Rocky mountains rise from the bed of the sea in the extreme 

 south end of the continent of South America, and extend on a line 

 of a ffreat circle northward to Behrinjj's straits, thence southward 

 along the eastern coast of Asia, through Kamschatka, Eastern Tar- 

 tary, China, Thibet and Birmah, into the Island of Sumatra. It 

 is the grandest and most remarkable of all the mountain systems. 



