MECHANICAL RESOURCES. 125 



plied obliquely. What an enormous unapplied power 

 have we here in reserve. 



The water. — Who has moved about the high 

 grounds of our own county, and observed the multipli- 

 city of falls and rapids with which our streams abound, 

 without feehng that we have here unemployed power 

 equal to a quantity of manufacture that would startle 

 us to compute ? Rail roads almost annihilate such 

 trifling distances as stand in the way of employing 

 these means, and there seems to be only one really 

 important inconvenience in their general adoption. 

 This is the diminished supply both of wind and water, 

 during the summer season. To find a succedaneum 

 for this deficiency, allows exercise for all our enterprise 

 and ingenuity. 



But there is another power, yet scarcely brought 

 into use ; which never fails, summer or winter ; which 

 is equal to a thousand times more than all our steam 

 engines ; which requires neither rail roads nor carri- 

 ages, being always at hand on the most convenient 

 place for commercial manufacture ; that is, in every 

 sea port. This power is the tide. Why it is not 

 much more employed, I am at a loss to explain or 

 comprehend. 



There is a point at every tide when it is inactive ; 

 namely, at high water : but this is so easily remedied, 

 as hardly to be an objection. Water may be pumped 

 up into a reservoir, by the overplus power, when the 

 current is most rapid, as at half tide : or a second re- 

 servoir may be kept, to work into at a certain point 

 of flood, whilst the principal one is filling ; and this 

 portion of water will go in addition to the other at low 

 water. Let the reader take up Cooke's chart, or 

 Rowe's map of the neighbourhood ; and look at the 

 multiplicity of creeks indenting the shore of our har- 

 bour in every direction ; the banks of the Tamar, in 

 particular ; and picture to his fancy a manufactory 

 upon each of them, doing as much work as the power 

 is equal to. Let him then look round the west of 

 Great Britain and L'eland; particularly the western 



