are pressed together; it bears unharmed a
temperature so high as would convert pure
India-rubber into a sticky mass. Curiously
enough, while Mr. Hancock was bringing his
discoveries to a practical issue, Mr. Goodyear
was making experiments, which led to the
production of a substance possessing all the
properties of vulcanised or sulphurised (a
better term) India-rubber; and both of their
countries are now reaping the advantages
resulting from the separate investigations of
these ingenious men.

There is another name which we associate
very closely with the subject of India-rubber
the name of Macintosh. The Macintosh cloak
or cape was the result of many and long-
continued inquiries. Such a garment is, in effect,
made of a cotton or flax cloth varnished with
liquid India-rubber; but the most effectual
substance for resisting wet is produced by
cohering two thicknesses of cloth together with
the same liquid: the gum acting in the one
case as a varnish, in the other as a cement, but
being in both quite impervious to water. The
cloth is stretched out flat, and the India-rubber
is spread over; formerly the caoutchouc was
dissolved in spirits of turpentine or in coal
tar, and evaporated to the proper degree of
unctuous adhesiveness; but an improvement
was made by kneading the gum with naphtha
into a pulpy mass, and using it without it
having been actually liquefied. Still, the India-
rubber, as is its wont, stiffened in cold
weather, and a Macintosh cloak became a
most unbending and ungracious companion
as soon as the temperature sank to anything
like freezing point. It was not until the
introduction of the sulphurizing process,
that this inconvenience was surmounted by a
modified use of that operation.

In America, and in England, the
applications of this kind of varnished cloth
have become prodigiously numerous. Many
of these kinds of waterproof cloth are strong
in the direction of warp, but weak in that of
the weft. To remedy this defect, the American
inventor has devised a sort of stuff or felt,
formed in successive layers of thread crossing
each other in various directions; there are
no "long threads" or "cross threads," but
the cloth yields, and resists, equally in
every direction, like a piece of felt. When
this texture has been anointed with a pulpy
coating of India-rubber, it forms a very
remarkable material, a kind of tough paper
quite impervious to moisture. Many persons
will remember the excellently printed India
rubber maps brought over to us by the
American Exhibitors: thin, light, smooth,
but amazingly strong, these maps are
suggestive of other useful applications. The
same kind of India-rubber felt is also printed
as a paper-hanging for damp walls, with very
serviceable effect. The felt is itself somewhat
thin; but means have been invented for
applying it to the surface of a kind of woollen
wadding, thereby producing a thick, warm,
waterproof, but light and cheap material
for out-door clothing: we know little of this
in England, but across the Atlantic, many a
cozy garment of the kind may be seen. The
felt, instead of being applied as a coating to
something else, may itself be coated with a
woven material: if this woven material be a
printed cotton, then we have at once a small
table-cover produced. On the other hand, if
a carpet be required on a floor so damp
as to rot an ordinary worsted production—
make a layer of thick woollen down or
flock, cover it with a layer of the India-rubber
felt, and we are rewarded with a warm,
cheap carpet. By embracing a strong hempen
canvas between two layers of the felt, a
waterproof sailcloth, or tarpaulin, or rickcloth, or
tent of great strength and toughness is
produced. Of some such redoubtable substance
are made the life-boats, insubmersible boats,
and pontoons, which are much more familiarly
known in America than in England: in the
Mexican War the carriage of the military
equipage was greatly aided by the use of boat-
bridges made of India-rubber canoes, and
inflated with air. The India-rubber shoes,
too, of our transatlantic friends, which are
produced to the number of three or four
millions in a year, exhibit many curious
modes of applying the gum to the surface of
the woven material.

The real India-rubber shoes are made with
extraordinary quickness by laying on the
liquid gum as a varnish on a last, then
drying it; then applying a second coating;
and so on, until the necessary thickness for
a shoe has been obtained. But it is of the
shoes having a woven foundation, that we
here speak. In the cheapest of these, there
is a layer of India- rubber applied to the
surface of a non-elastic woven material. In
the next better kind the woven foundation is
elastic, being a sort of knitted work; these
yield to the movements of the feet, and to the
lumps and bumps which our unfortunate
pedal extremities too often exhibit. A thin
variety of this last-named substance is much
used in making gloves for domestic wear in
America—gloves that will enable the
industrious lady of the establishment to do
much household work without endangering
the whiteness of her fair hands.

Those who have worn Macintosh cloaks
and India-rubber shoes will have had
frequent and not very pleasant proofs that the
sanitary evil—defective ventilation—may
visit men's clothing as well as men's dwellings.
The truth is, that in keeping water out we keep
perspiration in; the same impervious gummy
wall produces the one result as the other.
Among the numerous little matters to which
the ingenious Connecticut inventor has
directed his attention, is this affair of non-
ventilation. How to keep the water out, and yet
leave escape-holes for perspiration? Water,
we know, from numerous examples, will not
penetrate through very small holes unless there