DISCOURSE OF W. B. TAYLOR. 317 



ences was naturally very considerably increased. The Departments 

 of War, of the Navy, and of the Treasury, were besieged by pro- 

 jectors with every imaginable and impossible scheme for saving the 

 country, and demolishing the enemy. Torpedo balloons, electric- 

 light balloons, wonderful compounds destined to supersede gun- 

 powder and revolutionize the. art of war; cheap methods for the 

 manufacture of Government bonds and paper-money; multitudinous 

 expedients for the prevention of counterfeiting, by devices in the 

 engraving, by secret markings, by anti-photographic inks, by pecu- 

 liar textures of paper, (applicable to coupons, to circulating notes, 

 to revenue stamps,) each warranted to be infallible; such were 

 among the agencies by which patriotic patentees and adroit adven- 

 turers were willing to serve their country and to reap their reward 

 by the moderate royalty or percentage due to the magnificence of 

 the public benefit. Such were among the unenviable tasks of 

 examination and adjudication accepted by Henry, only from an 

 intrepid sense of duty. 



" The course which has been pursued of rendering the Govern- 

 ment in its late trials, every aid which could be supplied by scientific 

 research, has been warmly approved. As most persons are probably 

 entirely ignorant of the services really rendered to the Government 

 by the Institution, I may here state the fact that a large share of 

 my time, (all indeed which could be spared from official duties,) 

 has been devoted for the last four years to investigations required 

 by the public exigencies. Within this period, several hundred 

 reports, requiring many experiments, and pertaining either to pro- 

 posals purporting to be of high national importance, or relating to 

 the quality of the multifarious articles offered in fulfillment of legal 

 contracts, have been rendered. The opinions advanced in many of 

 these reports, not only cost much valuable time, but also involved 

 grave responsibilities. While on the one hand the rejection of a 

 proposition would be in contravention to the high importance 

 claimed for it by its author, on the other the approval of it would 

 perhaps incur the risk of the fruitless expenditures of a large 

 amount of public money. It is not necessary, I trust, to say that 

 the labor thus rendered was entirely gratuitous, or that in the 

 judgment pronounced in any case, no regard was paid to the inter- 



