60 Capt. M'^Konochie 07i the most effective use of 



New Cumnock, at all good, and fitted for the conveyance of 

 great weights, even for the single horse cart. It may therefore 

 be expected, that great improvements will still be made, when 

 the roads are better directed, or railways, which are now pro- 

 posed, and even actually surveyed *, have been introduced, so as 

 to render communication easy, and the resources of the different 

 parts of Nithsdale available for the general use. 



And when mineralogy, a science so interesting to the philoso- 

 pher, comes to be more generally understood and applied to the 

 discovery of useful mineral substances, we may expect that this 

 tract will furnish products not yet brought to light, which may 

 contribute to promote agricultural and manufacturing industry; 

 and that the Valley of the Nith, though not the most extensive, 

 may become one of the most important that is any where to be 

 met with in Scotland. 



On the most effective Employment of Steam Power in main- 

 taining a Ferry. By Captain Alexander McKonochie, 

 R. N. Communicated by the Author. 



X. HE superiority of steam over wind as a prime-mover, is suf- 

 ficiently recognised in almost every department of art ; and 

 wherever the manufacture will defray the additional expence, 

 almost without exception the first has driven out the last. In 

 maintaining ferries, however, this superiority has been more fully 

 admitted, perhaps, than in any thing besides ; — the uncertainty 

 of sailing boats, now ten minutes and now an hour in making 

 the same passage — the number of piers to which they must ply, 

 according to circumstances of wind and tide with which the 

 public cannot be acquainted — and the cold, wet, alarm, and even 

 positive danger, to which passengers on board of them must oc- 

 casionally be subjected, — being all evils which no perfection of 

 management can even palliate ; and which have been so much 

 more impatiently borne as a better means of transport has be- 

 come better known, that in modern phraseology, the improve- 

 ment of a ferry, and the substitution of steam for sailing boats 



• Report relative to the proposed Railway from Dumfries to Sanquhar, 

 by Robertson Buchanan, made in 1811. 



