371 SURFACE CONDENSATION IN LOCOMOTIVES. 



objections of weight, room, and difficulty of getting and of 

 carrying water in locomotive engines is entirely removed. It 

 will therefore prove an investigation of greater utility to the 

 public than anything yet introduced. 



" I have to beg the great favour of your Lordships appointing 

 not only scientific but practical engineers to inspect my plans, 

 that you may be perfectly satisfied of their utility, not only in 

 theory, but also as to the practicability of carrying the same 

 into full effect." 



The petition in June, 1830, for the loan of a Govern- 

 ment hulk, hung fire up to January 1832, when an 

 attempt was made to move the Lords Commissioners of 

 the Admiralty by the force of numbers. 



" We, whose names are hereunto subscribed, have known Mr. 

 Kichard Trevithick, of Hale, in the county of Cornwall, for a 

 period of years, and during which time his conduct has merited 

 our unqualified approbation. As an engineer of experience and 

 eminence few, if any, can surpass him, and his present improve- 

 ment of the steam-engine seems to outvie all others. We 

 therefore, in justice to his talent, strongly recommend to the 

 Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty that he may be per- 

 mitted, at his own costs and charges, to fit and make trial of his 

 engine in one of His Majesty's vessels. 



" Dated in London this 27th day of January, 1832." 



This was sent to Mr. Davies Gilbert, who on the 

 same date suggested the following : 



"RECOMMENDATION OF ME. RD. TuEViTHiCK, January 27, 1832. 



" We have not any doubt or hesitation in recommending Mr, 

 Richard Trevithick as a man of extraordinary powers of inind, 

 and of fertility of invention. 



" Cornwall owes to him much of the improvements that have 

 been made on Mr. Watt's engine improvements that have 

 reduced the consumption of coal to a third; nor have his 

 exertions been confined to steam-engines alone. He now 

 proposes to make the same water act over and over again by 



