The Daguerreotype is a case in point. The inventor, and all those concerned in placing the discovery before the public, take care that the prices shall be kept so that a remuneration shall be obtained before it is let down to the bare cost of production, added, it may be, to interest upon capital employed. The mass, in its soft stage, does its own work; that is to say, a sheet of it may be laid over a mould, and the bare weight of a shovel full of sand cast upon it will press it into every lineament of the matrix. This sheet of the soft material may have for its components, a large proportion of oxide or of saw-dust, as the desire may be either an imitation of bronze or of some particular wood, or other material. * * * Mr. Charles Goodyear, in an unpublished work upon the subject, states that the first pair of India-rubber over-shoes were made by himself and daughter in a cellar in New York. There are now millions of them made each year at the various India-rubber mills throughout America, France and Belgium. But a singular desire to appreciate and follow sequences, and an indomitable perseverance in conquering difficulties, appears to have acted upon the industrious mind of Mr. Goodyear, in this direction with peculiar force. The India-rubber over shoe perfected, Mr. Goodyear did not sit down quietly to contemplate his work, even when apparently complete, but strongly convinced that there was more to do than covering the feet of nations with a water-proof substance, however symmetrical in its form and comfortable in its fit under almost every circumstance, he felt that if the leather boot or shoe could be altogether dispensed with, and there could be substituted for it an India-rubber boot or shoe, a boon of priceless worth would be conferred upon humanity, the more so as the item of boots and shoes to a poor family, or even to a person of moderate means, was one of considerable importance. To reduce the cost of this article of clothing, and to give to the poor man a pair of boots at one-third of the present expense, and not as now, at more than one-half of his week’s wages, has been one of the special objects of Mr. Goodyear’s untiring life. That he will succeed in this, there now exists not a shadow of doubt. The combinations of the hard, the semi-hard, and the soft vulcanized India-rubber, have given him all the needful elements of success, and ere long, boots and shoes of India-rubber which need not a morsel of leather for their formation, will be as plentiful as over-shoes are now, and even more so. The power of the hard, the semi-hard, and the soft vulcanized India-rubber to resist wear, is one of their extraordinary features. Heels, for instance, made of the soft material, have been put on to shoes of boys at the United Parish School at Norwood, and on to the toes of the same boots iron tips of the eighth of an inch have been secured. The result of this test has been that the iron has been worn out, and the heel,