BOOKS RECEIVED.

The House Surgeon, or the Doctor at Home, &c. By the late Alfred Smee, F.R.S. Tenth edition. London: Accident Insurance Company (Limited).

THIS is an invaluable little book, price sixpence. It contains instructions for the prompt treatment of accidents and emergencies before the arrival of medical aid, and the instructions are given in the simplest and plainest manner possible. The little book should be on board every ship. By its aid many an accident could be divested of disastrous consequences.

Our Blue Jackets; a Narrative of Miss Weston's Life and Work among our Sailors. By an Eye-witness. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1878.

THE sailors among whom Miss Weston has worked, are the sailors of the Royal Navy only, and her work has consisted in endeavouring to bring men under the influence of Christian belief and principles, and to check the evils of intemperance. An establishment known as the "Sailors' Rest and Institute," set going by Miss Weston, at Devonport, appears from this narrative to attract a great many blue jackets, the inducements being comfort, moderate charges, entire absence of intoxicating beverages, considerate treatment, and religious services. According to the testimony of "an eye-witness," Miss Weston is doing a great amount of good among the sailors of the Royal Navy. If she could extend her labours so as to include the merchant seamen, she would find much greater need for her ministrations.

The Meteorology of the North Atlantic during August, 1873. Illustrated by daily charts. By Captain Henry Toynbee. London: J. D. Potter, 31, Poultry; E. Stanford, Charing Cross. 1878.

In our volume for 1877, pages 1,142 et seq., will be found a paper prepared by Captain Toynbee on "The Great Hurricane, the

Tracks of American Storms, and the Ordinary Winds of the North Atlantic experienced in August, 1873."

The valuable works before us are an elaboration of that paper, and we need not therefore deal with the subject at length.

In August, 1873, a most destructive hurricane traversed a great part of the North Atlantic, which killed nearly 500 people; damaged, stranded, or wrecked more than 1000 vessels, and damaged or destroyed nearly 1000 buildings in the neighbourhoods of Cape Breton, Labrador, Nova Scotia, &c. Captain Toynbee's work is a careful and comprehensive view of all the circumstances connected with the origin and progress of this hurricane, derived from data chiefly supplied to the Meteorological Office by masters of vessels voyaging at that time in the North Atlantic. That this is a most useful record no seaman will venture to deny, and we trust that in the interests of Meteorological science and of Navigation this work may be the forerunner of many similar volumes in regard to other storms.

We have repeatedly appealed to masters of vessels to aid in the collection and dissemination of useful knowledge by furnishing the Meteorological Office with their experiences as regards weather at sea. It is impossible to estimate the actual value of such contributions, but there is little doubt that if the energetic workers at the Meteorological Office are well supplied with accurate records of weather they will be able to continue to promulgate information and advice, which cannot fail to be of the greatest service to the mariner. On this point we would refer our readers to an announcement from the Meteorological Office in our advertising columns.

Life of Robert Stevenson, C.E., &c., dc. By David Stevenson, C.E. Edinburgh A. and C. Black. London: E. and F. A. Spon.

1878.

ROBERT STEVENSON's reputation as a civil engineer rests chiefly on the important works carried out by him in the lighthouse and harbour branches of engineering. The somewhat inposing volume before us gives an account of his various labours, but the erection of the Bell Rock Lighthouse stands out prominently from

all the rest. The conception and execution of this grand work are sufficient to ensure Mr. Robert Stevenson an enduring fame. He held the position of engineer to the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses, and his experience and knowledge guided that body from 1798 to 1848, and since that time his sons, with hereditary intelligence, have continued to advise the Board.

In sundry other branches of engineering Mr. Robert Stevenson appears to have distinguished himself, and his professional career was a successful one. As a private gentleman he was much esteemed for his piety and benevolence, and in this volume his son pays a high tribute to his father's memory.

The book is splendidly got up, well printed, and illustrated with admirable diagrams and drawings, but although we have a high opinion of Mr. Robert Stevenson and his works, we cannot but think that the style of the memoir is more suited to a man who made a greater mark in life than Mr. Robert Stevenson. We must not, however, forget that the author of the memoir is the son of the man whose life and doings are so chronicled.

The Polysphenic Ship and Speed at Sea. By C. M. Ramus, M.A., Rector of East Guildford and Playden. London: Edward Stanford, 55, Charing Cross. 1878.

In his preface Mr. Ramus states that his pamphlet is written to keep before the country the consideration of a subject on which our continued existence as a naval power depends. This is an invention having for its object a large increase in the speed of ships, to be obtained by constructing them of such a form, that instead of going through the water, they shall, at high speeds, glide over it. Many former inventors have proposed to accomplish this by making the lower surface of the vessel an inclined plane. Mr. Ramus differs from them merely in proposing two inclined planes, believing that by this feature a stable and safe ship is secured. He has since increased the number of his inclined planes to three, and has altered the name from di-sphenic to poly-sphenic, we presume to cover any further increase in the number. He states that in April, 1872, he communicated the principle of the invention to the Admiralty, and was told by the

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Chief Constructor of the Navy that it was "the very thing they were looking for." Subsequently arrangements were made for the model to be tested by Mr. Froude at Torquay, in connection with a series of experiments on resistance, which that gentleman was making for the Admiralty. It may be necessary for us to state that Mr. Froude is the originator of the generally received theory as to the relation existing between the resistance of models and of the full-sized ships represented by them. For many years it had been well known that results as to speed obtained with models were altogether illusory as indications of what might be expected in the full-sized ship. To Mr. Froude belongs the honour of having ascertained the law of the relation of speeds, which may be thus briefly and roughly stated:-If a model and a ship are moved at speeds, the ratio of which is the square root of the ratio of their dimensions, then the ratio of their resistances is the cube of the ratio of their dimensions. The trial took place in the presence of Mr. Ramus, and the results were not satisfactory; this the inventor attributes partly to the fact that his model was tried as he proposed it, without alterations being made from time to time as they suggested themselves to him. In this connection we may remark that his first proposals were of the crudest; the inclination of the planes was to be one in three, which he altered before the trial to one in eight, and now proposes to make one in thirty-five. In other respects he shows a lofty superiority to matters of mere detail. Altogether, after reading the Parliamentary papers on the invention, and, we may add, the present pamphlet, we cannot help seeing that Mr. Ramus utterly fails to appreciate the position which any inventor who hopes for success must take up. This method is to make a present to the world of one grand idea, to be worked out in detail by merely professional people. We may remind him that the real work of the successful inventor is in arrangement of details, and in overcoming the practical difficulties which always stand in the way of new schemes. When any great invention becomes a success it is usually discovered that many people have thought of its main feature before, but the honour of the invention justly goes to the man who has gone into practical details, and has grappled with and overcome practical difficulties.

If the author of the pamphlet before us, instead of denouncing unbelievers in his polysphenic ship as self-interested and wilfully blind, had but put himself through the discipline we have indicated, he would, we believe, have long ago seen the impracticability of his scheme.

Mr. Froude's results of the trials, interpreted by the rule we have given above, were: that at speeds less than 30 to 40 knots the bi-sphenic ship might be expected to be "tipped" merely, and not perceptibly lifted; at 70 to 80 knots she would be sensibly lifted, and at a speed of 130 knots the lifting would exceed half the displacement; but up to this point the resistance would not diminish, but would, on the contrary, increase. To these conclusions Mr. Ramus offers the plausible objection, that Mr. Froude's rule of comparison of ships with models is merely the result of experiments with a ship towed at ordinary speeds, and that it is not necessarily true when unprecedented speeds are in question. There is, however, the further result of the experiments which appear to us conclusive. At the highest speed, and when the model was lifted to a greater extent than half its displacement, so far from the resistance having diminished it had considerably increased, thus proving that even if the result of driving a "polysphenic" at high velocity be to decrease the immersed surface, the resistance per square foot of surface so much increases that the total resistance is not diminished. In other words even if a ship could be made to skim over the water, it would cost more power to so propel her than to drive her through the water,

Even if a vessel built in the shape of three consecutive wedges with a superstructure on top of them could be so propelled as to glide over the water at high speeds, the question would still have to be answered, What use could be made of her? Our inventor has in his own way approached this part of the question by stating his opinion that in a moderate sea the speed of the polysphenic ship would be increased because she would glide over the crests of successive waves, and in very rough weather her course would be no more impeded by large waves than is the case with vessels of the ordinary form. To us it appears that the lifting action of the wedges must be tangential to a large wave, and this would in