When Lady Franklin fitted out an expedition in search of her gallant husband, a year or two ago, Captain Forsyth, the commander of the vessel, took out with him a gutta-percha boat, presented for that purpose by Messrs. Searle. His account of the behavior of this boat, under the rough usage to which it was subjected in the ice-bound regions of the north, is most laudatory. He states that “whilst the other boats constructed of wood suffered much by the cutting of the young ice, the gutta-percha boat was not in the least damaged, and returned to England in almost as good condition as when she left, although she underwent all the rough work of the voyage.” Mr. Snow, who had especial charge of the gutta-percha boat belonging to the ‘Prince Albert,’ has detailed in a clear manner the remarkable way in which this material resists the rude buffetings of those regions. It must be remembered that the boat had a skeleton of wood and a covering of India rubber. Mr. Snow says, “The severest trial it endured, and endured successfully, was on both my visits to Whaler Point, Port Leopold. To those unaccustomed to the nature of such ice as was there met with, it will be impossible fully to conceive the position a boat was placed in. The mere transit to and fro, among loose masses of ice, with the sea in a state of quiescence, would have been quite enough to have proved or not the value of gutta-percha boats; but when, as in the present case, those masses were all in restless agitation, with a sea rolling in upon an opposing current, it might have been well excused—and without deteriorating from the previously attested goodness of the article—if it had not been able to have resisted the severe shocks it received.... Sliding through and over the ice; sometimes lifted completely out of the water by the sudden contact of a resistless floe; and at others thrown side-ways upon an adjoining craggy piece; I think it would have been next to impossible for any other kind of boat to have been otherwise than crushed or stove on the instant.” It was in a right spirit that the explorers gave the name of “Gutta-Percha Inlet” to the spot where the boat had rendered them such important service. GUTTA-PERCHA—MISCELLANEOUS APPLICATIONS.