readily available to the public all such information as can in any way aid the interests of art and industry.  If our manufacturers will reflect an instant on the vast amount of knowledge relative to their specialties extant in the world, which they have as individuals great difficulty in procuring, and which would be useful, but which an Institute devoted to the purpose could furnish without difficulty, they will at once appreciate the good which may be done by it.  For many years the only comprehensive summaries of American Manufactures were a German work by Fleischmann, On the Branches of American Industry, to which was subsequently added Whitworth and Wallis’s Report—­drawn up for the British government, and Freedley’s Philadelphia Manufactures—­to which we should in justice add the invaluable series of Hunt’s Merchant’s Magazine, and the Patent Office Reports.  The community needs more, however, than books can furnish.  It requires the constant accumulation and dissemination of technological knowledge of every kind.  It is proposed in the new Institute to effect this partly by publication and in a great measure by the labor of committees, devoted to the following subjects: 

1. Mineral Materials—­having charge of all relating to the mineral substances used in building and sculpture, ores, metals, coal, and in fact, all mineral substances employed in the useful arts, as well as what pertains to mining, quarrying, and smelting.

2. Organic Materials—­embracing whatever is practically interesting in all vegetable and animal substances used in manufacturing, having in view their sources, culture, collection, commercial importance and qualities as connected with manufacturing.  This department presents a vast field of immense importance to every merchant and importer of raw material.

3. On Tools and Instruments—­devoted to all the implements and apparatus needed in all processes of manufacture.

4. On Machinery and Motive Powers.

5. On Textile Manufactures.

6. On Manufactures of Wood, Leather, Paper, India-Rubber, etc.

7. On Pottery, Glass, and Precious Metals.

8. On Chemical Products and Processes.

9. On Household Economy. This department would embrace attention to whatever relates to warming, illumination, water-supply, ventilation, and the preparation and preservation of food, as well as the protection of the public health.

10. On Engineering and Architecture.

11. On Commerce, Navigation, and Inland Transport. This department alone, developed in detail, and on the scale proposed, would of itself amply repay any amount of encouragement and investment.  To collect and classify for the use of the public all available information on the subject of shipping, the improvement of harbors, the construction of docks, the location and efficiency of railroads, and other channels of inland intercourse; ’keeping chiefly in view the economical questions of trade and exchange, which give these works of mechanical and engineering skill their high commercial value,’ is a project as grand as it is useful.