

BOATS. 159 



and mechanics sometimes become so wedded to the method of 

 doing things in the way they have been taught, and their interests 

 become so blended with the existing state of things, that of all 

 persons they are least likely to discover any improvement that 

 produces a change, or makes an innovation in their branch of 

 business. 



An observer, whose mind is free from bias of any sort on the 

 subject, may therefore, in some cases, by research, and by apply- 

 ing his energies to a single point, come in possession of advan- 

 tages, connected with his experience in other matters and pursuits, 

 which more than counterbalance the disadvantages under which 

 he labors, for the want of knowledge of the new art or profession 

 in which he engages. 



The year before the writer commenced his experiments with 

 India rubber, he was occupied with attempts in the improve- 

 ment of boats, by constructing them of metal tubes upon a plan 

 very similar to the one hereafter described. A difficulty was 

 then found in combining and securing the tubes together, so as 

 to make them water-tight. The improvements in caoutchouc 

 manufacture, consequent upon the discovery of the vulcanizing 

 process and the invention of the whalebone board, render the 

 manufacture of boats upon this plan now both practicable and 

 simple. When the art of forming metal tubes shall be sufficiently 

 advanced, so that they may be readily shaped to the model of a 

 vessel, it is believed, that by the method of combining them, 

 represented plate , vessels may be built of metal tubes or 

 cylinders instead of sheets or plates of iron as heretofore. 



Since the time of the experiments before alluded to with 

 metal tubes, in 1834, great advancement has been made in the art 

 of building boats and other vessels of iron ; but this plan of using 

 the iron in a tubular form, and particularly the method of uniting 

 and binding the tubes, was then, and is even now, quite new. 



As an argument from analogy in favor of this plan of build- 

 ing with tubes or cylinders, whether as applied to boats or ships, 

 it may be said that the frame-work of the whole vegetable ci^ea- 

 tion is cylindrical. The greatest portion of the bones of all 



