Some Account ofi}ie Northern LigfU housea. 119 



when a sufficient number of lights shall have been erected on the 

 coast, and an adequate sum provided for their maintenance, the 

 duty is ultimately to cease. 



There is perhaps nothing which more strongly marks that 

 elevation of mind and character which one would expect from 

 the Northern Lights Board, constituted as it is of men of edu- 

 cation and habits of business, than its assiduous attention to the 

 improvement of the lights of the coast. This, we think, is suf- 

 ficiently manifest in the change made from open coal-li res to 

 glazed light-rooms, with reflectors. Nor do they seem to be at 

 all stationary in this respect : their engineer has lately visited 

 the coast of France, and brought with him a new lens appa- 

 ratus from Paris. The Board has farther procured an ap- 

 paratus from London, for the exhibition of the lime-ball light, 

 with oxygen and hydrogen gases, as employed by Lieutenant 

 Drummond. In order to enable the engineer to try these and 

 other experiments which he has in view more fully than could 

 be done at his temporary observatory near Inchkeith Light- 

 house, the Board have not only extended his apparatus, but also 

 the means of applying it, by the erection of three light-room 

 cabins on Gullan Hill, a place admirably adapted for such a 

 purpose, and affording such practical opportunities of trial as to 

 prevent all danger of being misled by theoretical hypotheses. 



This splendid apparatus, after much "detention from various 

 causes, to which it would here be out of place to allude, was 

 ready for exhibition in the month of February last, and its ex- 

 hibition was continued till the day had lengthened out too much 

 for such observations. We shall, however, mention the results 

 as far as the experiments have been proceeded in, and we hope 

 hereafter to be able to give further details, as we understand 

 they will again be resumed next winter. 



We have already noticed that the light-houses are now fur- 

 nished with reflectors of silvered copper, raised to moulds made 

 with accuracy to a parabolic curve, whose focal distance is 4 

 inches. These reflectors measure over the tips 21 inches as ap- 

 plicable to stationary^ and 25 inches for revolving lights, and 

 are illuminated by means of Argand burners, with an effect, 

 which we may safely say is not surpassed on any coast in Europe. 

 In the much neglected state of the coast of France during the long 



