444 THE SCIENTIFIC PAPERS OF 



definite manner in favour of steel as a metal not liable to corrode 

 under ordinary circumstances. One of them was from the Clyde 

 Bank Foundry, in which it was stated by Mr. Thompson that forty 

 steel boilers had been at work for more than two years, and that 

 their examinations had led to the conclusion that no active 

 corrosion was going on. He believed it would be found, from 

 general experience, that steel under proper conditions lasted at 

 least as well as iron. He hoped that the discussion would bring- 

 out such further facts as would put the question practically at 

 rest. That there was, under certain conditions, a very active 

 corrosion going on both upon steel and iron was clearly proved by 

 the paper, and by other experiments ; but the conclusions drawn 

 by the author in favour of iron were, he thought, unjustified by 

 the results of his own experiments as well as those 'of others. 



In the discussion of the Paper 



" ON THE PECULIARITIES OF BEHAVIOUR OF STEEL 

 PLATES SUPPLIED FOR THE BOILERS OF THE 

 IMPERIAL RUSSIAN YACHT ' LIVADIA,'" by W. 

 PARKER, Esq., Chief Engineer Surveyor of Lloyd's Register, 



DR. SIEMENS*. said : The behaviour of the material composing 

 the boilers of the Livadia is so extraordinary, and the results so 

 contradictory, that it is certainly of the greatest interest to have 

 it sifted to the very bottom. When the defective condition of these 

 plates was first discovered, Mr. Parker kindly sent me a piece of 

 plate broken off short by a hammer. The analysis which I had 

 made showed that the metal was irregular in its composition, and 

 it gave a certain percentage of an element which I do not see 

 represented on that table, and that is silicon. The specimen 



* Excerpt Transactions of the Institution of Naval Architects, Vol. XXII. 

 1881, pp. 27, 28. 



