598 Transactions of the American Institute. 



cards to be distributed among the members of the Polytechnic and 

 others who might thus be induced to become regular attendants. 



As the monthly meetings of the Institute are held on Thursday 

 evening, it is^ proposed that the Polytechnic meet on some other 

 evening, so that its weekly sessions may be held without interruptions. 

 In making this change the standing committee would doubtless be 

 guided by the wishes of the association. 



During our recess I had the pleasure of attending the meeting of the 

 American Association for the Advancement of Science, at Indianapolis, 

 in August. The attendance was large. Nearly 100 papers were read. 

 Some of the most important of these, when printed in full, will be pre- 

 sented for your examination. It will be gratifying to many here to 

 learn that several members of this body bore prominent parts in the 

 deliberations of the sections devoted to physics and chemistry. From 

 the pleasant recollections of that association, whose highest aim is to 

 ascertain the laws of the material universe, I turn with sadness to 

 review the terrible consequences which have lately 7 resulted from a 

 disregard of some of those laws already well known. 



On the 30th of July the " Westfield," a ferry boat plying between 

 New York and Staten Island, was lying at her slip in this city, filled 

 with passengers and ready to start, when her boiler exploded, causing 

 the death of 100 human beings and the wounding of about as 

 many more. The cause of. this disaster, I hope, will be made the 

 subject of your careful deliberation. No society has published more 

 than this, on the causes of boiler explosions, or done more by discus- 

 sions to prevent the occurrence of such disasters. Your warnings 

 against the danger of using weak or defective boilers must be many 

 times repeated before the public are fully aroused to the importance 

 of greater safeguards in the use of steam. 



Another subject to which this association has devoted much atten- 

 tion is the danger to be apprehended from the use of those hydro- 

 carbons, the products of oil wells, which vaporize at a very low degree 

 of heat. Rumor says the upsetting of a petroleum lamp, and the 

 explosion of its contents among the combustible materials of a stable, 

 was the commencement of the most disastrous conflagration of which 

 we have any record, and which has resulted in the complete destruc- 

 tion of nearly all the business portion of the city of Chicago, involving 

 her merchants in one common ruin, and carrying its calamitous effects 

 to almost every part of the commercial world. An unusual combina- 

 tion of causes tended to increase the area of that fire until it was 

 beyond human control, and then was seen, on the grandest and most 



