44 APPENDIX. 



ties similar to those proposed for the new department, on the 

 continent of Europe, and the Board of Ordinance, in England, 

 also has its chemical operator. The losses which it is known 

 have been sustained by the United States, for the want of such an 

 assistant, would have paid an hundred times his salary, if one 

 had been appointed at the establishment of the federal gov- 

 ernment. 



The advantages derived by France from her ingenious men, 

 mentioned p. 27, are summed up by Chaptal, in a paper read to 

 the Nat. Institute, in 1815, on the manufacture of sugar from 

 beets. For an account of the measures adopted in France to 

 collect salt-petre, see " Archieves of Useful Knowledge," voL 

 3, p. 353. 



In fine, there is no calculating the quantum of benefit that 

 may be produced from an officer of Government steadily direct- 

 ing his attention to every thing connected with the internal im- 

 provement of the country; or that would tend to foster that inven- 

 tive spirit, or keep alive the industry and enterprise that prevail 

 among the citizens of the United States. Let us only for a mo- 

 ment advert to the articles gypsum and red clover seed. What 

 would have been said of a person fifty years since, when that pre- 

 cious mineral, and still more precious seed, were first introduced 

 into Pennsylvania, if he had asserted that they would in less than 

 half a century, add more to the real wealth of the state, by being 

 employed in its agriculture, than if a gold or silver mine were, 

 to be discovered? Would he not have been called a madinan, or 

 have been set down as a visionary character, as Fitch and Kum* 

 sey were, when they asserted that boats cuuld be propelled 

 against the currents of our rivers by steam? Or, at least, such 

 results would have been declared as improbable, as the spinning 

 of two threads of cotton at once?* Not only has the solid capital 

 been increased by the increased exports of the animal and vege- 

 table productions which have been multiplied, but, from the na- 



• Dr. Franklin once predicted, in a company of several members of the 

 Royal Society of London, that the day would come when this would be 

 done: but they all pronounced the exploit impossible. 



