PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 139 



Mr. Johnson then showed that the length of the lighted coasts 

 of the United States, except those of the Mississippi, Missouri, and 

 Ohio rivers, measured on a ten-mile chord, was 9,959 miles, giving, 

 as his authority, recent statements made on this point by the United 

 States Coast and Geodetic Survey and of the office of the Chief of 

 Engineers of the United States Army ; the one as to the length of 

 the ocean, gulf, sound, and bay coast, and of the lighted rivers 

 beside those above named,' and the other as to the length of the 

 lighted lake coasts. He then pointed out the natural mistake of 

 M. Allard, in supposing that the amount of the Board's estimates 

 {he Budget Annuel du Bureau des Phares) had been appropriated 

 by Congress for its support ; and he showed instead that the appro- 

 priations were much less than the estimates, and that, owing to 

 various causes, the appropriations even had not all been expended, 

 so that the actual expenses of maintaining the United States Light- 

 House Establishment for the year ending June 30, 1880, were 

 but $1,943,600 instead of $2,046,500, as M. Allard had inferred. 

 Hence, it followed that, while it costs France 1,155 francs to light 

 each nautical mile of her coast, it costs but 922.7 francs to light 

 each nautical mile of United States coast, instead of 1,293 francs 

 as has been erroneously inferred by M. Allard. 



Mr. Johnson closed by stating that the Light-House Establish- 

 ment of the United States had been largely modeled on that of 

 France ; that the Light-House Board, while it still hoped to reach 

 the French standard in many things, hardly expected to attain to 

 certain of its economies ; that he should not have thought of com- 

 paring the cost of the maintenance of the two establishments, but 

 as this comparison had been made in the official French journal, 

 he had thought it well, and due to the science of pharology, to cor- 

 rect the errors which had crept into the calculations of this high 

 officer in the French Light-House Service. 



The paper from which Mr. Johnson read, and on which he based 

 his remarks, may be found in full in the Annual Appendix for 

 1880, to be published by the Appletons as Volume XX of the New 

 American Cyclopedia. 



Remarks on this paper were made by Messrs. Hilgard and 

 Thornton A. Jenkins. The latter gave some interesting remi- 

 niscences of his early connection with the light-house service. 



