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. 



