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question of safety, some of the shrewdest minds have been and are still engaged. Ships are built in floatable sections; so that in case of wreck or collision, if one part be injured, the others will not sink. Indeed, it followed as a matter of necessity that iron ships should be made buoyant by novel devices, seeing that in case of disaster, wood had the advantage. Thus, the effort has all along been to join strength with elasticity. Recent improvements in making steel, now place in the ship-builder's hand a material that seems equal to any mishap that even oceannavigation may be liable to. Mild steel appears to be a sort of metallic india-rubber that will stand any amount of strain, or impact, without fracture. For some time steel has been taking the place of iron, from its greater strength and lightness combined; now that this new kind is introduced, having still greater advantages, and as the cost of it will be doubtless reduced by its growing employment, we may see an acceleration of the maritime revolution which has been going on for half a century. The ships which are swift and sure will certainly drive out those which are slow and unsafe. Competition is feverishly active in every avenue of business, and in none more than in the mercantile marine. The Alaska, of the Guion Line, has shown that the Atlantic can be crossed within seven days; not by good luck, but by good engines, right course, and resolute navigation. Messrs Inman have discarded the City of Rome because she has not speed, and they doubtless will replace her by a ship that will at least equal the Alaska, perhaps surpass her. At anyrate we may be sure that Messrs Inman will avail themselves of the last achievements in naval architecture and engineering.

Nor is it only among British ship-owners that competition obtains; there are signs on the other side of the Atlantic that the ocean is to be crossed in a yet shorter time than our own steam greyhounds require. The dome-ship Meteor, now building on the Hudson, is expected to go from New York to Queenstown in little over five days; she is to run at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour. In many respects, the Meteor is a marine novelty, being decked over, so as to glide through the Atlantic surges, instead of over them. She has no masts. Experience alone can demonstrate if she is to accomplish what her designer expects; but whether she fails or not, it is certain that the next few years will witness many further experiments in ship-construction, in methods of propulsion, and in economies connected with both. M. Raoul Pictet, the eminent engineer of Geneva, is said to be engaged upon a new system of ship-building; and from his remarkable achievements in other departments of physics, it may well be that he will win further successes in this new field. It is said that he expects to cross the sea at the rate of thirtyseven miles an hour. Such speed would produce an extraordinary change in the commercial relationships of mankind, and would hasten that redistribution of nations that is now going on so fast in America and Australasia.

And lately there has entered upon the scene a new agent, that may have incalculable results upon navigation and navigators. It is electricity. A year or two ago the public of Paris were shown an electric boat, designed by M. Trouvé, and

experimented by him upon the Seine. Although but a large toy, it proved that electricity was capable of being applied as a maritime motor. The experiment was quite as successful as the early attempts to propel vessels by steam; and those who knew how great the progress of electrical art has been of late years, had no doubt that it would eventually be applied on a larger scale. Such has come to pass. On the 29th September 1881, an electric launch, twenty-six feet long and five feet broad, drawing two feet of water, having on board four passengers, went from Millwall to London Bridge-a distance of nearly four miles-at a speed of eight knots an hour against the tide. The return-journey was made in twenty-four minutes. It was calculated that the electric energy expended was equal to three and one-eleventh horse-power.

But

This striking proof of the capability of electric propulsion will soon be followed by demonstrations on a still larger scale, and by which the commercial value of such a motor can be further tested. After all, the question of navigation is decided by economy. Steamships are superseding sailing-ships simply on their commercial merits. A steamer costs much more than a sailer, and is much more expensive to navigate. it will make three or four voyages to the sailer's one; and calculated by cost per mile sailed, and per ton of cargo and per passenger transported, the steamer is found to be far cheaper than its rival. So it will be with electric ships-they can succeed only on their commercial merits. Electricity, however, is in the same tentative condition that steam was a century ago. Who can say to what extent the subtle power may be applied ere a hundred years elapse?

But be they great or insignificant, one thing is certain-sailors will be still further changed from the type of the ancient mariners we knew in our boyhood, than they are to-day. Sailingships will disappear as the isthmuses of the world are pierced and the old routes are discarded. The Suez Canal has caused a revolution in itself; and if Panama be ever cleft, the trade of the world will again be metamorphosed. Each improvement in the craft demands a corresponding improvement in the sailor; no longer is he expected to be a mere animal of toil, but an intelligent link in a chain of causes working out the welfare of the world. The steam-tiller enables him to steer the huge monsters he controls as easily as a skiff; the steam-winch has relieved him of the labours of hauling; the rapidity of his transits from port to port has relieved him of the dreary monotony of long voyages; and better food and treatment have raised him in the scale of humanity.

In a word, the lot of the sailor partakes of the ameliorations going on among the humbler toilers of the world. Although improvement has certain disadvantages attending its first steps, these disappear. No doubt the age of steam has introduced into our mercantile marine a vast number of foreigners, to the injury of our own tars in the matter of pay, and to the detriment of the nation's maritime strength in case of a great and prolonged naval war. But such was inevitable, as Great Britain has supplanted the shipping of so many foreign nations. The decline of apprentices, the employment of 'ordinary' seamen, the

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the peaceful tillers on the English side of the Border. Yet yonder rises on its eminence, with dark woods around it, Castel Vawr, flashing back the sunbeams as of old, more beautiful, if less strong, than before the mantling ivy and the drooping foxglove and tenacious bindweed had clung to its venerable towers, and before the once-new white Norman masonry had assumed the picturesque grayness of hoary age.

At a tiny station, where, nevertheless, other than parliamentary trains were wont to stop, since railway Companies are accommodating where a great landowner and a peer of the realm is concerned, within easy reach of Castel Vawr, the two sisters alighted. There were carriages from the Castle in waiting there, and a fourgon for the luggage, and black liveries, and a respectful little rustic crowd of frontier-folks, who hardly knew to which nationality, Celtic or Teutonic, they belonged; who talked English in the alehouse and sang Welsh hymns in chapel, but who took off their broad-brimmed Westcountry hats with a low murmur of inarticulate reverence, as the widowed mistress of the great Castle passed through the midst of them on her way from the platform to her carriage. That carriage, with its sable hammercloth and coroneted panels, blended emblems of pride and woe, rolled off, swiftly and smoothly, along the well-kept road. It was bright spring weather, the lark carolling aloft, the saucy chaffinch chirping from the apple-boughs that overtopped the woodbineclustered hedge of some cottage garden.

But the occupants of the carriage, as it traversed this smiling landscape, had remained silent, until at length one of them said almost timidly, in a low sweet voice that was broken by emotion: 'I hope, my darling sister, that we at least shall never be parted. I have but you in the world now, remember, and we two should never separate.'

With some slight expression as of perplexed surprise, but with ready tears welling up to her gentle eyes, she who was addressed bent forward to kiss the speaker's pale cheek. 'We never will, dearest, if the choice rests with me!' she said softly, and then the two sat for some moments hand in hand, but mute.

The carriage had by this time reached the lodge gates of the ample Park, and was rolling along amidst green lawns and bosky dells, beloved of the fallow-deer, under the arching oaks of the grand avenue.

Again was heard that sweet tremulous voice: 'I do hope, love, that we shall both feel equally at home at Castel Vawr, as we did once at poor shabby old Carew. I do hope that it will be your home, dear sister, while I live, as well as mine.'

Again the look of pain and surprise crossed the listener's fair face; but the only reply was a smothered sob, for just then the carriage dashed up to the stately front of the Castle and came to a stop before the great doors, wide open now, while a muster of liveried servants stood on the broad stone steps waiting to welcome their mistress.

In the great drawing-room of Castel Vawr, the many windows of which commanded a matchless prospect of vale and river and the bold chain

of the Welsh mountains beyond, sat Lady Barbara Montgomery, a spinster aunt of the late Marquis, tall, upright, and dignified, with aquiline features and iron-gray hair smoothly braided. Unfriendly social critics not unfrequently remarked of Lady Barbara that she was as cold as an icicle and as hard as a flint; but the remark was not quite just. She was a proud woman, nothing more; but then nobody loves the proud if pride implies undue reticence. The silent are always at a discount in society, and very few of us have eyes keen enough to penetrate the defensive armour of such as Lady Barbara. She was not proud because she was a Lady Barbara-not in the least. With her the pride was quite innate, and would have made itself obtrusively manifest had she been the daughter of the pettiest village shopkeeper. As it was, it centred in the strongly felt remembrance of her ancient lineage, and in the appreciating of a semi-feudal splendour and dignity of deportment doubly dear to her because nothing else had ever awakened her frigid fancy.

Two-thirds of Lady Barbara's life had been spent at Castel Vawr, and yet she was by no means dependent either on her brother the former, or her nephew the late, Marquis. An early bequest had made her rich. She had a good London house, had she chosen to live in it, and a handsome income, had she cared to spend it; but she clung to the Border Castle with an attachment that was absolutely catlike; and her great fear had been that she might have to leave the house that was her birthplace, as the chiefship of the family might now devolve upon a cousin. That fear, however, was happily averted. The late Marquis had possessed an unusual power of making splendid settlements for his young wife's benefit, and Clare was to have the castle and lands for her life. Lady Barbara had not much apprehension that the widowed Lady Leominster would either object to her continued residence beneath that stately roof, or interfere to any serious extent with her customary household arrangements. Marchioness would reign, of course, as titular sovereign; but hers would be a sway like that of some Merovingian king of France, with My Lady Barbara for a petticoated Mayor of the Palace.

The

Lady Barbara was not on this occasion alone. With her was the family solicitor Mr Pontifex, of the well-known firm of Pounce and Pontifex, who had journeyed down from Lincoln's Inn expressly to receive the widow of his late noble client on her first arrival as absolute mistress at princely Castel Vawr. These hereditary lawyers often come to consider themselves as part and parcel of the great families whose marriage and mortgage deeds they have continued to draw, and whose feuds and weaknesses and whims have been laid bare before them for successive generations. Pounce and Pontifex, who were, so to speak, legal confessors to half the peerage, had a special regard for the House of Montgomery-Leominster. Mr Pontifex himself, a round little man, with gray whiskers, goldrimmed glasses, and wholesome pinkish face, looked very like a country banker or land-agent, and not in the least like the ideal of a London attorney. His manner was at once bland and abrupt, perhaps jerky; and he took a good deal

of strong-scented snuff from a costly box, the valued legacy of a ducal client long deceased.

'How fortunate, as I said before, that poor Wilfred was so thoughtful,' said Lady Barbara, after a pause, during which lawyer and lady had alike been listening for the expected sound of wheels; and that he was able, too, to dispose of his own. For otherwise, Adolphus Montgomery would have been master here, and Castel Vawr could have been no home for me any more.'

Adolphus was the name of the new Marquis of some weeks' date, and Lady Barbara could not endure as yet to speak of him otherwise than by his plain Christian and surname, while even these she pronounced with a little pardonable irritation. It provoked her that the Leominster coronet should have passed away from the main stem-her own-to a younger branch, descended from a half-forgotten cadet of long ago. Such feelings may be foolish, but they are not unnatural. Be sure that Marguerite of Valois, discarded wife and divorced queen of the Great Henri, had her own private notions as to the mushroom pretensions of the then upstart royal House of Bourbon of Navarre! The remark was transparently selfish, but it did not surprise Mr Pontifex, who merely showed his white front teeth as he replied: "Very fortunate! The present peer, however, will Ah! there is the carriage.'

IS THE SUN WASTING? DURING the last twenty years, the subject of the constitution of the sun has attracted very great attention, not only amongst scientific men, but amongst intelligent readers of books and newspapers. We think it therefore of interest to give our readers a popular account of the different theories upon the sun's heat, and especially a new one bearing the name of Dr Siemens, whose reputation is so well known from his discoveries in metallurgy and electricity, and who filled the chair of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at its meeting at Southampton.

Most of our readers doubtless know the chief figures which denote the dimensions of the sun, especially since the transit of Venus eight years ago led to a correction of the distance of the sun from the earth, according to the figure that had for many years been accepted. But perhaps not so many persons have realised the enormous figures that represent the heat of the solar orb, as contrasted with the figures that we are familiar with on the subject of terrestrial heat.

The volume of the sun is about one million three hundred thousand times that of the earth, and its distance from us, in round numbers, about ninety-three millions of miles. And since we all of us every day see the wonderful effects of the heat and light which even this little world of ours receives, we can form some faint idea of the enormous amount of heat continually given out by the sun and the prodigious waste that must be going on. And if

we would form any real estimate of this heat and waste, we must remember that all the light and heat which is received by the earth and other planets is a very small proportion of the amount that is being continually poured forth. It might be shown, with a moderate knowledge of geometry, that the amount so shed into space, where there are no planets to receive it, is two thousand two hundred and fifty million times as great as that which is received by all the planets which form our solar system.

We naturally ask: What is the condition of a body which is capable of throwing out for thousands, and perhaps millions of years, so vast an amount of light and heat? For it has been computed that the temperature of the surface of the sun would be expressed by eighteen thousand degrees of Fahrenheit's thermometer, or between eighty and ninety times the temperature of boiling-water. This is about five times the highest temperature that man is able to produce by artificial means. Also the light given off from the same surface is computed as being five thousand three hundred times more intense than that of the molten metal in a Bessemer converter, though that is of an almost blinding brilliancy. Or if we compare it with the oxy-hydrogen flame, the sun sheds a light equal to a hundred and fortysix times the intensity of the lime-light.

So intense is the heat of the sun, that no known substance could remain in a solid form when subjected to such a temperature. Hence it has been concluded that the entire orb, vast as it is, is an aggregation of gases altogether void of that the outside visible surface of the sun flows any trace of liquid or solid substance; moreover, like the surface of the sea, or rather like vaporous masses of cloud and misty air. But we must not suppose that this vaporous material is of little weight throughout the whole substance of the sun; for in consequence of the sun's vast size, the pressure in the inward portions must be so great through the influence of attraction, that the internal mass is believed to be denser Maxwell and others have shown that the viscosity than water. And as the late Professor Clerk or tenacity of a gas increases fast with the rise matter of the sun's interior would resist motion of its temperature, it is possible that the vaporous like a mass of pitch or putty.

When thinking about this enormous amount of heat, philosophers have naturally inquired whether it is being dissipated gradually, or whether it is by some means sustained undiminished; and if so sustained, by what means. There have until matter; but recently a third has been broached recently been put forth two theories on the by Dr Siemens, and it has appeared in the Nineteenth Century under the title of 'A New Theory of the Sun'-that is, as regards the sustentation of its light and heat. We will mention the old theories in their natural order. First, all our everyday experience teaches us that when combustion is taking place, the substances which are giving out light and heat are parting different forms, as gas and a residuum of ashes. with their matter, and causing it to assume We see this in the burning of a piece of wood or coal, or even a piece of paper. We do not say the substance is lost. If we could gather up

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all the products of the combustion, we should find that they had not lost a particle of their weight, but that the form of them was materially changed. This, then, we conclude is the case with the sun. As we have stated above, the enormous light and heat which is being continually thrown into space, proves that the sun is converting much of its substance into other forms; and unless the waste be supplied from some external source, the material of which the orb is composed cannot fail to be gradually diminishing; though in the case of a body of such large dimensions, it must be a long time before there is any perceptible diminution either of volume or heat. But the loss of heat is by some believed to be compensated by the diminution of volume. Professor Newcombe, of Yale College, United States, has come to the conclusion, that with the diminution of the mass, the heat augments; and that, by this compensation, a shrinking of the mass might go on for five millions of years, and that it would then be eight times as dense as it is now. And he concludes that the present conditions of radiation of heat and light cannot have gone on for more than ten millions of years, and probably cannot support life on the earth as now for another ten millions. This theory, then, does not profess to provide for an indefinite continuance of the sun's present powers. And we may add, by the way, that even if we are led to contemplate the ultimate extinction of light and heat in the sun, it is no more than appears to have happened in the moon, which appears to be a dark and inert mass, the rotation of which has been perhaps stopped by some such tidal action as we know is at work upon our planet, and very slowly, but steadily, retarding our diurnal rotation. That the moon does not rotate is manifest from the fact that it always presents the same face to the earth. The first theory, then, does not profess to show that the sun's waste is repaired from without.

The second theory is, that the waste is repaired, both in volume and heat, by the continual impact or striking of meteorites upon its surface. This theory is due to Dr Mayer of Heilbronn, and was published in 1848. It was enthusiastically received by Sir William Thomson of Glasgow, one of the greatest physicists of the day, and who is especially known for his successful researches in electricity. It is well known that if a body when moving rapidly be suddenly stopped in its course, heat is the immediate result. We may see this exemplified when a bullet is fired against a stone wall; the lead becomes heated. This theory supposes that the sun is being perpetually hammered like a ponderous anvil by falling meteors, and that its heat-energy is maintained as a lump of iron is kept hot by the vigorous blows of a blacksmith. Various calculations have also been made as to the amount of heat generated by the impact of a small planet, or other mass, the weight of which can be computed. But surely if there were falling continually on the sun such a mass of meteors as would repair the regular waste, the earth would meet with a good deal more of such matter than it does in the periodical meteoric display in November and other occasions; and the orbit of the planet Mercury, which is the nearest known of the sun's satellites, would exhibit some traces of this

powerful influence. We can therefore hardly attach much weight to this theory.

We now come to the new theory started under the powerful name of Dr Siemens. It seems very probable that the theory has been suggested by observation of the regenerative gas furnace of which he and his brother, Herr F. Siemens, are the originators, wherein the surplus heat, which has not been at first utilised for work, is returned through a central regenerative chamber to the gas and air about to be burned, before the waste products, with which it was previously associated, are sent up the chimney.

Dr Siemens starts with the following assumption, that all the space between the planets, and even between the fixed stars, is filled with something of a much more substantial character than imponderable ether. Many of our readers will know that the phenomena of light have been for many years explained by what is termed the undulatory theory of light, which presupposes the presence of a very subtle fluid termed ether, pervading all space; and that the vibrations of this ether produce all the phenomena of light, including the variety of colours in the rainbow, or as seen in a prism. But Dr Siemens's new theory of the sun demands the presence of a much more substantial medium. We cannot here go through all the considerations which have led him to his conclusions, but may briefly state that he considers that the materials thrown off from the sun by its energetic action are through the presence of this gaseous medium 'dissociated' or resolved into elementary substances; and when so resolved, burst into flame under the influence of the heat; and are turned back into the compounded state, as hydrogen is converted into water upon earth with the evolution of flame. Then he assumes that the matter so converted is acted upon by the sun's attraction, and redrawn into the mass of the sun by its enormous gravitating power. Our author is careful to guard his theory from being looked upon as one involving the idea of perpetual motion;' but it certainly presents an appearance of such a principle at first sight.

We can but briefly discuss the great difficulties that beset the reception of this theory. In the first place, it is needful to prove that this gas, upon the existence of which the whole theory rests, has any existence at all. And there are these two main objections to its presence. If this vapour be dense enough to arrest the heat-rays of the sun, and to convert them by 'dissociation' into materials upon which the sun's attractive power can have the ordinary influence of gravitation, then the flame, having the nature of a resisting medium, must have the effect of producing a retardation of the planetary movements; a result which, if it existed, would long since have been detected. And if it be not dense enough to produce this resistance, it is difficult to conceive that it can have sufficient coherence to enable it to arrest and deal with the heat emanations of the sun. Again, we observe in our own atmosphere that the smallest trace of watery vapour is sufficient to intercept the heat of the sun, and by formation of cloud, to shut the sun's rays from the earth. Surely, therefore, if the whole of space is pervaded by a gas containing the least amount of vapour, the sun's rays while passing through