I soon after consulted with J. H. King and Henry Hinckley, both capitalists, with means, as to the proposals of Tal. P. Shaffner, and the conclusion that we arrived at, was, that, as all the cash capital, and the only practicable method of manufacturing a safe, stable and pure Nitro-Glycerin, was already secured by patent to me, to place seventy-five thousand dollars at the disposal of the parties named by Mr. Shaffner would not be a sensible or prudent course, in view of the condition to which the management of the said Shaffner had reduced the United States Blasting Oil Company’s affairs financially, and the failure to supply the demand for Nitro-Glycerin, although the United States Blasting Oil Company had no competitor in New York; so I informed said Shaffner that said Hinckley and King would not advance the money, to wit: seventy-five thousand dollars, under such arrangements, and the proposition fell through. And I would further state, that at each of the various interviews—one of them prolonged for four hours without interruption—the said Tal. P. Shaffner fully admitted to me that any one could or might make Nitro-Glycerin, either by the method described by Sobrero, the inventor, in 1846, or by my patent, granted in 1868, April 7th, without in any way infringing on the patents issued to A. Nobel, and assigned to said Shaffner, as President of the United States Blasting Oil Company. And further, on the 8th December, 1869, I was at Oil City, at the request of the Lake Shore Nitro-Glycerin Works, and assisted in the explosion of one blast in three drill holes of Nitro-Glycerin, using a frictional electric machine, insulated wires, the priming fuse and fulminating charge, as described in Letters Patent, granted to me, July 27th, 1869, and being No. 93,113, and entitled “An Improved Method of Exploding Nitro-Glycerin.” I am well informed of the four re-issued patents, Nos. 3,377, 3,378, 3,379 and 3,380, and the methods therein described differ very materially from the method that was practised on the 8th December, 1869, at the Oil City Tunnel, by me, and particularly in this very material respect; whereas, by the method practised at the Tunnel, an operator can blast simultaneously at will one hundred drill holes; by the methods described in the re-issues above mentioned, it is absolutely impossible to explode two drill holes simultaneously. And this difference between the simultaneous blasting of a number of holes and firing the same number of holes one after the other has been found in actual results to effect an economy of thirty per cent. in the cost of blasting out rock in the Hoosac Tunnel. In a book (Exhibit B), entitled “Liebig and Kopp’s annual report of Chemistry for 1847 and 1848”, pages 376 and 377, volume 2, published in London in 1850, there is a notice of the comparative power of nitro-cotton and gunpowder, and reference is there made to the nitro-compounds, made from dextrin,