158 GOODYEAR ON GUM -ELASTIC. 



BOATS. 



The magnitude ,of the consequences depending on the proper 

 construction of boats and vessels, demands that all should be done 

 that is possible to this end, and although apparently all has been 

 achieved that could be, with the materials that have been used 

 in the ordinary methods of construction, yet it is more than 

 probable that with other materials and methods of combining 

 them, further improvements will be made in this art. That the 

 caoutchouc fabrics, whalebone and whalebone board, are the 

 new materials with which boats of different kinds will be greatly 

 improved, there is good assurance. The strength and elasticity 

 of these materials, together with their extreme lightness, renders 

 their usefulness for this purpose a matter of certainty. In the 

 building of large boats, such as ships' long-boats, their strength 

 will be increased by the use of the whalebone board, in the form 

 of tubes, in the manner hereafter described and represented in 

 plate . For other boats, this substance is strong enough in 

 the form of sheets, much stronger than any kind of wood of the 

 same weight ; nor is it necessary to give it a tubular form for 

 boats of any size, except to make them much stronger than wood, 

 with the least expense. 



In making suggestions for the adoption of new materials, and 

 new combinations of them, for the building of vessels of a large 

 class, some circumstances which have led to these suggestions 

 are stated, lest it should be thought that the subject is wholly 

 foreign to the writer's occupation. 



It is so ordered as a general rule, that individuals of one occu- 

 pation cannot easily encroach upon that of others, or make im- 

 provements in branches of business with which they are discon- 

 nected. 



There are, however, exceptions to this rule. As some nations 

 are so strongly attached to particular customs, and fixed habits 

 of thinking and acting, as almost to prohibit all advance in 

 science and the arts among them, so different classes of trades 



