288 
OPENING THE TRACHEA BY DILATATION. 
The stores of English iron accumulated in view of pro- 
spective railroads, stopped by the bursting of the railway 
mania in Britain, have been precipitated on our markets at 
low rate until they are exhausted, and, while our demand 
is rapidly increasing, through the extension of railroads, 
machinery, iron buildings, fences, &c., the accustomed 
plentiful supply from abroad is cut short. The consequence 
is, that iron of all kinds has largely advanced, and promises 
to advance still further and for a long time. Another con- 
sequence, more gratifying if the advantageous impulse be 
rightly improved, is a prospect of reopening of all the closed 
iron- works of the country. It is safe to calculate that the 
present good time for iron-men will last four or five years 
before competition and extravagant mismanagement can 
again flux the market. 
To this the New York Courier adds — “ If the late remark- 
able enhancement of the price of iron be indeed a ‘ gratifying’ 
circumstance in view of the prospect that the price will keep 
up three or four years, then why should it not have been 
equally ‘gratifying’ if Congress had imposed a specific duty 
on iron three or four years ago, whereby our iron-works 
might have received an ‘ advantageous impulse,’ with not 
merely a doubtful prospect, but wfith a moral certainty that 
this ‘impulse’ would hold good until home competition 
should have reduced the price of iron. If it be such a good 
thing to have the price of iron put up by British iron- 
masters for their own profit, w 7 hy would it not have been a 
still better thing to have had it stiffened years ago by your 
own legislation, whereby the enhanced price paid by our 
people would have been paid into the federal treasury, or 
served to stimulate enterprise and reward labour here at 
home ? Why ?” — Morning Post . 
SOME OBSERVATIONS RELATIVE TO THE PROPOSITION 
OF OPENING THE TRACHEA BY DILATATION, TOGETHER 
WITH AN INSTRUMENT DEVISED FOR THAT PURPOSE. 
By Z. Johnson, Esq., Surgeon to the Kilkenny Infirmary. 
The instrument wdiich I propose will be understood best 
by inspection. It combines, with a curved trocar, the prin- 
ciple of Ricord’s ingenious speculum vaginae. The trocar is 
furnished wdth a pair of lateral springs, w T hich, by divaricating 
the wider end of the canula, keeps it closed behind the 
