160 GOODYEAR ON GUM-ELASTIC. 



animals, and especially of birds, is of the same shape, and hol- 

 low. This is the form which the Creator has adopted in his 

 works (as best exemplified in the case of birds), where strength, 

 speed, and buoyancy are requisite ; why should it not be adopted 

 in the building of vessels, where the same qualities are neces- 

 sary ? 



At the time the writer made his experiments in boat-building 

 with metal tubes in New Haven, in 1834, he firmly entertained 

 the opinion of the correctness of this theory, and he is now 

 fully convinced of its practicability, and that gi'eat improvements 

 will be made in boats and vessels by this method of construction 

 with tubes. These experiments were pursued during that year 

 with the same ardor, and subjected him to the same kind of 

 ridicule from those who witnessed them, as subsequently attended 

 his experiments with gum-elastic. 



These efibrts at boat-building resulted in the completion of 

 two sail-boats, each about fifteen feet long. 



One peculiarity of this method of construction is, that each 

 tube is used instead of a plank or timber in the ordinary way of 

 building with wood. These tubes being each one hermetically 

 sealed, the whole are united together in the manner hereafter 

 specified in the article on long-boats, and as represented in 

 plate . Another peculiarity is the use of metal, copper, or 

 brass for the tubes, instead of iron. It is assumed that the in- 

 creased strength of sheets of these _ materials, arising from their 

 being used in a tubular form, will more than compensate for the 

 difference in strength between them and iron, Vt^hen iron is used 

 in the form of plates, so that even the first cost could hardly be 

 greater than that of iron as now used, in which case a vast 

 economy is obvious. These finer metals used in the form 

 proposed, could seldom be lost, even in the case of wreck they 

 would float somewhere, and not being liable to corrode, like 

 iron, the parts of an old vessel would always be of nearly the 

 same value as when new. 



It is not yet known to what extent caoutchouc may be used 

 in the construction as well as the equipment of ships. Upon 



