PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIAXION. 605 



rial, even if cut into proper lengths, could not be spun upon cot- 

 ton machinery with the same facility as cotton. 



Dr. Van der Weyde said that cotton from Africa could not be 

 used on account of its coarseness. In India the fiber is too short ; 

 so that the United States have the monopoly of cotton for the 

 whole world. 



Dr. Richards had heard, in a lecture upon Iceland, that cotton 

 is one of their productions, we have the same plant — the swamp 

 cotton grass — growing native in most of our swamps, especially 

 in the northern part of the State of New York. 



The President said that he had been unable to procure a speci- 

 men of the yellow China cotton, which was much prized, and 

 from which nankeen was formerly extensively made. He would 

 bring a specimen of it next week. 



NEW SUBJECT. 



Mr. Dibben proposed for the next evening, the subject of "The 

 Electric Telegraph and Telegraphing Apparatus." 

 Adjourned. 



American Institute, Polytechnic Association, ) 

 March 6, 1861. J 



Prof. Mason in the chair. 



The Chairman took occasion to allude to the improving pros- 

 pects of the American Institute with regard to the practical ac- 

 complishment of scientific work. The proceedings of this Asso- 

 ciation were now reported, and 200,000 impressions circulated 

 every week. He believed that t*lie American Institute Avould be- 

 fore long have a permanent home, with a laboratory devoted to 

 scientific investigation. He was confident that men of wealth 

 would be glad to sustain permanently in such a laboratory the 

 best investigator that could be found. We might hope, there- 

 fore, to obtain new light upon fundamental questions which yet 

 remain unanswered g,s they were in the days of Newton and of 

 the elder Bacon, the questions of vital force, and the beginning 

 of the encroachment of vitality upon the regions of purely ele- 

 mentary matter, what are its laws, and how they operate. 



electric telegraph. 

 Mr. Dibben said that in the first employment of telegraphing 

 apparatus the spark was used. The first experiments were gen- 

 erally made by Germans. The next step was the discovery that 



