iries regarding the history and durability of paper boats
occasionally reach me through the medium of the post-office. After all
the uses to which paper has been put during the last twenty years, the
public is yet hardly convinced that the flimsy material, paper, can
successfully take the place of wood in the construction of light
pleasure-boats, canoes, and racing shells. Yet the idea has become an
accomplished fact. The success of the victorious paper shells of the
Cornell College navy, which were enlisted in the struggles of two
seasons at Saratoga, against no mean antagonists,--the college crews of
the United States,--surely proves that in strength, stiffness, speed,
and fineness of model, the paper boat is without a rival.

[Illustration: A FULL-RIGGED NAUTILUS CANOE.]

When used in its own peculiar sphere, the improved paper boat will be
found to possess the following merits: less weight, greater strength,
stiffness, durability, and speed than a wooden boat of the same size and
model; and the moulded paper shell will retain the delicate lines so
essential to speed, while the brittle wooden shell yields more or less
to the warping influences of sun and moisture. A comparison of the
strength of wood and paper for boats has been made by a writer in the
Cornell Times, a journal published by the students of that celebrated
New York college:

"Let us take a piece of wood and a piece of paper of the same
thickness, and experiment with, use, and abuse them both to the
same extent. Let the wood be of one-eighth of an inch in
thickness--the usual thickness of shell-boats, and the paper
heavy pasteboard, both one foot square. Holding them up by one
side, strike them with a hammer, and observe the result. The
wood will be cracked, to say the least; the pasteboard, whirled
out of your hand, will only be dented, at most. Take hold and
bend them: the wood bends to a certain degree, and then splits;
the pasteboard, bent to the same degree, is not affected in the
least. Take a knife and strike them: the wood is again split,
the pasteboard only pierced. Place them on the water: the wood
floats for an indefinite time; the pasteboard, after a time,
soaks, and finally sinks, as was to be expected. But suppose we
soak the pasteboard in marine glue before the experiment, then
we find the pasteboard equally as impervious to the water as
wood, and as buoyant, if of the