The Albany Institute. 



53 



APPENDIX TO JUDGE CLINTON'S PAPER. 



Remarks by Henry A. Homes, LL. D. 



As a sequel to the paper just read by Judge Clinton, I beg the privi- 

 lege of adding one or two remarks. His topic and the honored 

 writer's name suggest allusions to the changes wrought with the lapse 

 of time, and to the growth of knowledge as regards the resources and 

 the geography of .the State. I hold in my hand the first printed 

 annual report of the Albany Institute, made in the year 1825. It is 

 not included in the first volume of its Transactions and is exceedingly 

 rare. It appears from the list in this report, that of the sixty donors 

 to the Institute up to that date, that only three are now living: Mr. 

 0. Meads, Judge G. W. Clinton and Mr. W. H. Bogart. And of the 

 resident members, only four are now living, Mr. 0. Meads, Dr. T. 

 Hun, Mr. W. C. Little and Dr. P. Ten Eyck. Judge Clinton did 

 not become a member until after he had been a donor and had read 

 his first paper. 



Judge Clinton's first paper, which is printed in the first volume of 

 our Transactions, was read in 1827, and was entitled a Notice of the 

 Graphite of Ticonderoga. At the time when he visited the place 

 where graphite or plumbago was found in Essex county, it was col- 

 lected by the farmers of Alexandria and sent in the crude state to the 

 amount, perhaps, of three tons in a year, to New York city to be re- 

 fined and manufactured for various uses. Since that time and within 

 a few years, graphite has been found associated with gneiss in quite an 

 extensive district; a company has been formed which has at Ticon- 

 deroga an immense brick building, two stories high, and which em- 

 ploys over a hundred men in the preparation of the graphite for the 

 market for the various uses for which it is employed — for crucibles, 

 lead pencils, stove polish, paints, and especially a magically fine 

 powder which successfully takes the place of the smoothest oils as a 

 lubricator to obviate friction of machinery or of the wheels of rail- 

 way cars. The company sends by rail on an average, a car load every 

 week of the products of their works to the centers of commerce. 



A further illustration of the increase of knowledge in this State is 

 obtained from this same first volume of our Transactions. Prof. 

 Joseph Henry, in 1829, being Professor of Mathematics and Natural 

 Philosophy in the Albany Academy from 1S26 to 1832, read a paper be- 

 fore the Institute entitled Topographical Sketch of the State of New 



