oreroom of his matron contain many articles whose utility is
increased by the use of it, and some that could be made of nothing
else. His shirts and sheets pass through an India-rubber
clothes-wringer, which saves the strength of the washerwoman and the
fibre of the fabric. When the government presents him with an
artificial leg, a thick heel and elastic sole of India-rubber give him
comfort every time he puts it to the ground. An India-rubber pipe with
an inserted bowl of clay, a billiard-table provided with India-rubber
cushions and balls, can solace his long convalescence.

In the field, this material is not less strikingly useful. During this
war, armies have marched through ten days of rain, and slept through
as many rainy nights, and come out dry into the returning sunshine,
with its artillery untarnished and its ammunition uninjured, because
men and munitions were all under India-rubber. When Goodyear's ideas
are carried out, it will be by pontoons of inflated India-rubber that
rivers will be crossed. A pontoon-train will then consist of one wagon
drawn by two mules; and if the march is through a country that
furnishes the wooden part of the bridge, a man may carry a pontoon on
his back in addition to his knapsack and blanket.

In the naval service we meet this material in a form that attracts
little attention, though it serves a purpose of perhaps unequalled
utility. Mechanics are aware, that, from the time of James Watt to the
year 1850, the grand desideratum of the engine builder was a perfect
joint,--a joint that would not admit the escape of steam. A
steam-engine is all over joints and valves, from most of which some
steam sooner or later would escape, since an engine in motion produces
a continual jar that finally impaired the best joint that art could
make. The old joint-making process was exceedingly expensive. The two
surfaces of iron had to be most carefully ground and polished, then
screwed together, and the edges closed with white lead. By the use of
a thin sheet of vulcanized India-rubber, placed between the iron
surfaces, not only is all this expense saved, but a joint is produced
that is absolutely and permanently perfect. It is not even necessary
to rub off the roughness of the casting, for the rougher the surface,
the better the joint. Goodyear's invention supplies an article that
Watt and Fulton sought in vain, and which would seem to put the
finishing touch to the steam-engine,--if, in these d