164 * Mr, Nixon on the Theory of the ^ [Sept. 



Parliament regulating the extent and the fixing of the bowsprit, 

 and limiting the proportions which the breadth of a vessel must 

 bear to its length, feuch legislative interference is detrimental 

 to science : experience teaches us that attempts to run goods 

 will continue so long as high duties create the temptation ; and 

 the boat restrictions, instead of mitigating the evil, have but 

 caused the removal of the capital and skill of the constructors 

 from our own coasts to those of Holland. If a smuggler build alug- 

 ger 13 feet beam, 96 from stem to stern, and the bowsprit 60 feet 

 long, why not launch a custom vessel of 100 feet in length : the 

 smuggler, if chased, would use his best endeavours to escape; the 

 revenue officer, actuated by duty and stimulated by hope, would 

 exert his utmost to make a seizure, and the relative success of 

 either party would soon determine the most effective limits of 

 length to breadth. 



Let not these remarks be misconstrued into an advocation of 

 illicit trade. Taxes must be raised, and consequently any per- 

 son who by smuggling evades paying his individual share, com- 

 mits a fraud on the rest of the community by binding on others 

 the obligation of his own debts. My sole wish is that naval 

 science may not be injured by legal enactments. On the same 

 principle that laws are made for building and fitting of vessels, 

 why should not others pass, restricting residents on the coast 

 suspected of contraband addictions to the services of none but 

 lame horses ; whereas all such as are fleet shall be devoted to the 

 use of those engaged in the collection of the revenue. 

 1 remain. Gentlemen, your obliged 



Mark Beaufoy. 



Article II. 



Explanation of the Theory of the Barometrical Measurement of 

 Heights, By Mr. Nixon. 



{Concluded from p. 96.) 

 Calculation hy Logarithms. 

 We have seen that when the differences of the pressures sus- 

 tained at the summit and base of the strata of an atmosphere of 

 dry air are the same, the weights of those strata will be equal, 

 and their heights, granting them to be so thin as to be sensibly 

 of uniform density, will be reciprocally as the pressures they 

 support ; consequently as the difference of the logarithm of any 

 given number and that of another, greater by an indefinitely 

 small quantity, compared to the logarithmic difference of any 

 other given number, and one greater by the same difference will 



