Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 22.djvu/227

Rh If to the improvements already achieved could be added an engine of half the weight of the present steam-engine and boilers, and working with only half the present expenditure of fuel, a further addition of 30 per cent could be made to the cargo of an Atlantic propeller vessel—no longer to be called a steamer—and the balance of advantages in favor of such vessels would be sufficient to restrict the use of sailing-craft chiefly to the regattas of this and neighboring ports.

The admirable work on the "British Navy," lately published by Sir Thomas Brassey, the Civil Chief Lord of the Admiralty, shows that the naval department of this country is fully alive to all improvements having regard to the safety as well as to the fighting qualities of her Majesty's ships of war, and recent experience goes far to prove that, although high speed and manoeuvring qualities are of the utmost value, the armor-plate which appeared to be fast sinking in public favor is not without its value in actual warfare.

The progressive views perceptible in the construction of the navy are further evidenced in a remarkable degree in the hydrographic department. Captain Sir Frederick Evans, the hydrographer, and Vice President of the British Association, gave us at York last year a very interesting account of the progress made in that department, which, while dealing chiefly with the preparation of charts showing the depth of water, the direction and force of currents, and the rise of tides near our shores, contains also valuable statistical information regarding the more general questions of the physical conditions of the sea, its temperature at various depths, its flora and fauna, as also the rain-fall, and the nature and force of prevailing winds. In connection with this subject the American Naval Department has taken an important part, under the guidance of Captain Maury and the Agassiz father and son, while in this country the persistent labors of Dr. William Carpenter deserve the highest consideration.

Our knowledge of tidal action has received a most powerful impulse through the invention of a self-recording gauge and tide-predicter, which will form the subject of one of the discourses to be delivered at our present meeting by its principal originator, Sir William Thomson; when I hope he will furnish us with an explanation of some extraordinary irregularities in tidal records, observed some years ago by Sir John Coode at Portland, and due apparently to atmospheric influence.

The application of iron and steel in naval construction rendered the use of the compass for some time illusory, but in 1839 Sir George Airy showed how the errors of the compass, due to the influence experienced from the iron of the ship, may be perfectly corrected by magnets and soft iron placed in the neighborhood of the binnacle, but the great size of the needles in the ordinary compasses rendered the correction of the quadrantal errors practically unattainable. In 1876 Sir William