State of Science in our Dock-Yards. 321 



assert, that there is scarcely a single element in which the naval en- 

 gineer can predict with certainty what will be its effects whea 

 actually applied. 



There are difficulties, it will be readily admitted, in this art, 

 which are peculiar to itself, and perhaps appertain to no other. 

 But although it may be impossible to surmount, even by the aid of 

 the most enlarged experience, or the employment of the most 

 refined and powerful calculus, all the obstacles that oppose its 

 advancement ; still some considerable approaches may be made 

 towards perfection, by gradually imparting to our practice, a 

 more philosophical character than it now possesses. It cannot 

 be denied that a geometrician contemplates a mechanical combina- 

 tion in a manner peculiar to himself, and with advantages far 

 surpassing those of a man destitute of such important resources. 



It cannot be concealed, that until the establishment of the school 

 of naval architecture in Portsmouth Dock-Yard, few persons in any 

 of our naval arsenals ever thought of guiding their practice by 

 maxims drawn from the legitimate principles of science; nor did the 

 properties of the metacentre, or of the resistance of fluids, ever form 

 a subject of intelligent discussion within their walls. Nor again 

 must the fact be omitted, in the consideration of this most impor- 

 tant subject, that the public attention is in a high degreejixed on the 

 gentlemen who have been educated in the institution here alluded 

 to ; and that future years will manifest, by the improvements intro- 

 duced into our arsenals, the advantages of the course of instruction 

 they have enjoyed. They have indeed enjoyed great and eminent 

 advantages. They have been instructed in all the essential ele- 

 ments of mathematical science. They have had the writings of 

 Atwood, of Chapman, of Bouguer, and of many other eminent 

 theorists, placed in a familiar aspect before them ; and been taught 

 to apply many of their maxims to actual examples. They have 

 moreover been taught the higher uses of a calculus, which in every 

 branch of science, to which its transcendent powers have been 

 applied, has surmounted the greatest obstacles, and revealed in 

 living characters the most mysterious phenomena of the universe 



With such advantages, and those which a gradually enlarjjing 



