261 



LIFE-BUOY. 



LIGHT. 



consolidate the Acts relating to Merchant Shipping") ; by which the 

 supervision and control of such ships was vested in the Board of 

 Trade. Its provisions, among other important matters, related to life- 

 boats. Another benevolent society, the " Shipwrecked Fishermen's and 

 Mariners' Royal Benevolent^Soeiety " transferred some life-boats, eight 

 boat-houses, and five life-boat carriages, to the Life-Boat Institution ; 

 the two societies took up more clearly defined lines of action than 

 before ; and both gave up certain objects which the new Act enabled 

 the Board of Trade to attain more effectually. Since that year, the 

 Life-Boat Institution has greatly extended the series of life-boat stations. 

 In November, 1859, there were 88 life-boats belonging to the Insti- 

 tution, besides about 70 others belonging to various harbour com- 

 missioners, dock trustees, Trinity houses, ballast boards, fisheries' 

 commissioners, local committees, and associated boatmen. The Insti- 

 tution furnishes every possible aid to the crews of the life-boats, to 

 whomsoever belonging. In each case there is a boat-house in which to 

 shelter the boat from the weather ; and in many instances a carriage 

 on which to launch it. The crews are resolute and steady men, kept 

 to their work by a well-considered arrangement between them and the 

 Institution. 



A useful little manual has been published by the Institution; 

 giving instructions how to manage the life-boats. This manual has 

 recently been translated into French by Admiral Paris, for the use of 

 French boatmen. 



Although applicable to ordinary ships' boats rather than to life-boats, 

 we may briefly speak of the apparatus for quickly lowering boats. 

 Many lives have been lost through the imperfect way in which boats 

 are hung from the davits over the ship's sides ; insomuch that during 

 wreck or burning, cither the boat occupies too long a time in being 

 liberated, or it is capsized during its descent. Mr. Lacon, Mr. 

 Berthon, and many other inventors, have turned their attention in this 

 direction, with a view to devise a remedy. Captain Kynaston's 

 dainijuijiiii/ hovla are connected with a somewhat intricate but very 

 ingenious apparatus by which boats can be lowered quickly and safely, 

 by persons in the ship (not in the boat). Messrs. Wood and Rogers' 

 apparatus more recently introduced, is in a similar way worked by 

 the seamen on shipboard. But the most original and effective appa- 

 ratus u that invented by Mr. Clifford, in which the boat is lowered by 

 rson seated in the boat itself, even although there be the weight 

 of a dozen other persons hi the boat. There are ropes, blocks, pulleys, 

 rollers, hooks, and other apparatus so cleverly arranged, that the 

 manager of the boat can first lower it to the water's level, and then 

 disengage it altogether from the ship. 



Besides life-boats constructed for the especial purpose, there have 

 been several inventions for converting ordinary ships' boats into life- 

 boats upon a sudden emergency, which may be applied by the crew of 

 a ship in distress. The Rev. Mr. Bremmer proposed that empty casks 

 should be strongly fixed in ships' boats upon a plan described by him, 

 which on trial was found to answer perfectly. The silver medal of the 

 Society of Arts was voted to Mr. Bray for an invention by which air- 

 tight boxes should be fixed under the thwarts of ships' boats to render 

 them buoyant ; but these could not be applied extemporaneously, like 

 some of Mr. Bremmer's plans. 



LIFE-BUOY. Any thing being lighter than water, used as a 

 means of personal safety on account of its buoyancy, may be considered 

 a life-buoy. A variety of substances have been tried in various com- 

 binations for the purpose of assisting to save life, but seamen differ as 

 to the qualifications or advantages possessed by certain forms of life- 

 buoy. Many ingenious contrivances have been invented and attached 

 to the taffrail of a ship, from which, in case of sudden accident, such 

 as the falling of a man overboard, a buoyant substance could be 

 instantly detached for the relief of the unfortunate person. Some of 

 these have even the means of igniting a blue light for the guidance of 

 the man in the water, by the mere act of letting go. The life-buoys 

 referred to are generally formed of two small casks connected by a 

 strong beam, having a vertical staff thereto attached. Occasions have 

 happened in \vhich a miserable man has been supposed to have reached 

 th buoy which had been cast adrift for his safety, but which a heavy 

 gale or dark night had deprived the crew of all possible means of 

 recovering. It is, however, a point of conscience among seamen, never 

 to leave a buoy adrift on the ocean if recoverable, for fear of abandoning 

 the unfortunate occupant to the worst of all deaths, namely that of 

 starvation. 



Many kinds of life-buoys have been made of India-rubber, and 

 adapted for ready inflation by the wearer within the period of a few 

 second*. One sort is in the form of a waistcoat. But the buoy which 

 seems to have most successfully won its way among seamen of late 

 years ia that represented in the annexed cut. 



It is composed of slices of cork, BO nicely arranged as to form a 

 buoyant zone of about 32 inches extreme diameter, and 6 inches in 

 width, with a thickness of about 4 inches, and containing about 

 12 pounda of cork, compactly covered with painted canvas and 

 f uniUhed with looped life-lines, as in the drawing. 



Taking the cubic contents of the buoy as "86 of a cube foot, and sea- 

 water at 64 pounda the cubic foot, while the cork in the buoy would 

 weigh 12 pimiidii, and thus leaving at least 40 pounds as extra buoyancy, 

 one of tin; HO life-buoys would support about six ordinary human beings, 

 A man of 10 ntjne, in ea-water is commonly reckoned to weigh 



4 pounds ; the more he frantically forces his head out of water, the 

 more buoying power he will of course require ; but allowing for weight 



of clothes, &c., say, altogether, to the amount of 10 pounds each man, 

 this buoy would support four men with certainty. 



It is greatly to be desired that human life afloat should be better pro- 

 tected by the means of safety in case of accident afloat. The prejudice 

 against life-buoys is greatly diminishing in the merchant service ; and 

 the extraordinary exertions made by the National Life-boat Institution, 

 and the success of their precautionary measures in providing for those 

 in their employ upon the coast, has tended to show that it is no im- 

 putation on the courage of a brave man that he seeks to protect 

 his life. 



LIFTING, on Kaster Monday and Tuesday. A custom which for- 

 merly prevailed among all ranks throughout the kingdom, and may be 

 yet 'partially practised in some of our distant counties. In Pennant's 

 time it was not uncommon in North Wales. Strange as it may seem, 

 this custom is intended to represent, or rather to commemorate, our 

 Saviour's resurrection. The lifting of King Edward I. in his bed, on 

 the morning of Easter Sunday, by a party of the ladies of the bed- 

 chamber and maids of honour, together with the fee paid to them upon 

 the occasion, occurs upon the accompts of the comptroller of the 

 household of the eighteenth year of that king, preserved in a record 

 hi the Tower of London, communicated by Samuel Lysons to the 

 Society of Antiquaries, in 1805. 



LIGAN. [FLOTSAM.] 



LIGATURE, in modem music, a binding, indicated by a curved 



line, . If two notes on the same degree are thus joined, 



only the first is to be struck, but the second is to continue its full 

 tune. Ex. : 



In vocal music all the notes which are set to one syllable are bound 

 together. EJC. : 



A - - men. 



In music in the old character, that is to say consisting of longs and 

 breves, the notes in ligature were joined, that is, were written or 

 printed side by side. Ex. : 



A men. 



And sometimes the two characters were blended into o'ue. .c. : 



But the ancient ligature is now become obsolete, and any further 

 explanation of it is unnecessary. 



LIGATURE. [SUBOEKY.] 



LIGHT. The laws which govern the phenomena of light, when 

 propagated through a vacuum or a uniform uncrystallised medium, 

 form, with the exception of the laws of reflection, the only branch of 

 optics with which the ancients had a scientific acquaintance. The 

 discovery of single and double refraction, of .chromatic dispersion, 

 polarisation, and of mutual interference as exhibited in the various 

 experiments of diffraction, have formed both to the practical and 

 scientific men of modern times the sources of exploration in the 

 grandest phenomena of the physical world, as well as in those which 

 belong to the most delicate scale. 



The first branch of this subject has been called photometry, and is 

 confined to light emanating from whatever sources, but unmodified in 

 its progress through space by any external influences, though strictly 

 speaking photometry relates to the comparison, as to intensity, of two 

 streams of light under all circumstances. [PHOTOMETER.] 



In our cognisance of the form of objects by the sense of feeling, the 

 hand or other part of the body is brought into contact with the object 

 of our perception, and by some ancient philosophers it was supposed 

 that in like manner rays of aiyht were emitted from the eye in straight 



