Bev. Mr Ward Beecher, in an evening lecture in Brooklyn, which we had the pleasure of hearing, claimed the faculty of mechanical invention as the grand prerogative of the New England mind, and gave, as a proof, that if all the inventions in churns, and ploughs, and reapers were placed in a row, they would stretch from Maine to the Mississippi. But, granting this fertility of invention, would this long row of ingenious notions amount in value to a single invention with the stamp of genius? James Watt once remarked, that uneducated artisans sometimes stumble upon inventions in matters of detail, which may be of great practical value; but that almost never has such a man claimed the merit of an invention which involved some new principle not hitherto applied; and he took the governor of the steam-engine as an illustration. The application of centrifugal force to open and shut the throttle-valve has the stamp of genius; but the innumerable modifications of this principle have no such claim. It must be acknowledged, that if we take the higher class of inventions, America can claim but few contributions, notwithstanding the extreme ingenuity displayed in agricultural implements and domestic appliances.
There are several claimants of the invention, but, undoubtedly, Mr Bond has the chief merit in reducing it most successfully to practice. The improvement consists simply in this—that the sense of touch is substituted for that of hearing. In the former plan,
