428 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



[November, 



national gratitude, we most humbly beg leave to point out Peter Nicholson 

 as an object for the exercise of your Majesty's royal favour, and remain your 

 Majesty's devoted subjects and obedient humble servants. 



A new method of extracting the Cube Root, by Peter Nicholson. 



Rule, Part 1. — Divide the resolvend by the trial divisor, and the first 

 figure of the quotient is expected to be the next figure of the root. 



Wanting below on the right hand side of each of the three numbers under 

 the line, annex one cypher to the first, two to the second, and three to the 

 third. Triple the root found, and annex the new figure on the right. 



Multiply the sura by the new figure and add the product to the trial divi- 

 sor. 



Multiply this last sum by the new figure and subtract the product from 

 the resolvend ; if less, hut if not the work must be repeated. 



Rule, Part 2. — Add the new figure of the root to the number formed by 

 the triple root and the annexed new figure. 



Multiply the sum by the new figure and add the product to the complete 

 divisor, and the suai is the new trial divisor. 



Example. 

 12 



8 



_( = 



2'2894 



12-000000000000 



ON THE PROPOSAL FOR ESTABLISHING A ROYAL 



NATIONAL EXPOSITION. 



No. I. 



Sir, — Having thrown out tlie hint, to Timon, tluit such an institution, 

 especially if accomp-anied by a really working and workable board of 

 trade, would do more to encournge rising talent, more to ensure the 

 adoption of perfect works of art, commerce, and manufactures than all 

 the institutions and efforts of the last century, I am necessarily much 

 gratified to see the spirited maimer in whicli you have adopted my 

 views. 



An English institution of this kind must be fiee and and unbiassed ; 

 patronized as much as you please ; b\it left to practical men alone 

 for direction and control ; and, held annually not triennially. 



If once you admit the fetters of Lordocracy, the trammels of royal 

 Societyism, and the tinsel glare of Diplomacraft, which covers, in 

 ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, shallow brains, impudence and 

 trick, you will crush, in its bud, the spirit and the worth which thou- 

 sands yet unborn ought to see only to adiuire, and join only for 

 personal profit, protection, and fame. 



As it is, the practical applications of science have neither hope, 

 shield, nor home; their arduous suggestors are beggars, as a conse- 

 quence, living only to deplore lost time, foolish outlay, and blighted 

 hope; at least, so thought and felt such men as Captains Bosquett and 

 Tuckey, Harrison, Parkinson, John Murray, Skeane, Trengrouse, 

 Horner, and a phalanx of wortliy men. 



In my memory I liave numbered among my friends Henry Bell, poor 

 Dodd, the suicide, to whom Rennie owed more than half his fame, 

 Albert Winsor, Archibald Earl of Dundonald, William Nicholson, 

 Frederick Accum, when starving in a garret in Islington, Sir Anthony 

 Carlisle, Captain Christopher Wilson, and a host of men who, like 

 Fourdrinior, must either starve in disguise or be ruined in public by 

 the lax, disgusting state of our contemptible protective laws, or the 

 still mure contemptible common-place stultification of public office 

 routine, in which my Lord Cheeseparing, green from the mint, where 

 he knew nothing, is at liberty to condemn, through the medium of 

 some clerk, in a few vague and every day phrases, the whole results 

 of an injinildy superior man's life — aye, perhaps, at the Post Office 

 or Admiralty, the affairs of wliich he learned yesterday evening by 

 signing bis name ! 



This is no vituperation, no democratic asperity of mine; but, the 

 essence of the Royal reply to an exasperated Lord who vowed venge- 

 ance against Hans Holbein: — " Touch him not unto his injury: re- 

 member, that otil of seven ploughntn I can make seven Lords; but I 

 cannot, out of seven Lords, make one Holbein." 



I liave a case now before me, where an individual, after ten years' 

 scorn and gibes and contumely, succeeded in sending a "Ship's Life 

 Boat" ' to sea ten years ago, making twenty. Three years ago, when 

 the Thames steamer was wrecked off the .Scilly Isles, he addressed 

 the then Lord M:iyor, llr. Alderman Thomas Johnson, with the hope 

 of arousing mercantile spirit — a report of his address went the round 

 of the papers, and nearly three years afterwards the Shipwreck Com- 

 mittee (then unborn) copied all his long told tale, all his positions and 

 then recommended tliem for adoption with another man's boat and, {in 

 its omit sphere), a foolish one in contravention of the first fundamental 

 principle of life salvage at sea, though an useful good boat out of ils 

 sphere, y'v/.. where Archimedean or other screws are used; now, by a 

 National Exposition this man's arduous life had been saved half its 

 pangs, (j// its robberies; his purse had been replenished by sale, and 

 the meruit qui pahnam feral held forth as a stimulus to man. Such, 

 Sir, is not only the fact, and the working, but more ; more than one 

 peer of France owes his rank, title, and weallli to the influence of the 

 original of our proposed exhibition ; and, will any man point me out 

 one Peer of England whose coronet was given as the absolute reward 

 of genuine worth? Will any man tell me the stereotype Stanhope 

 would have ever become a Peer at all on such a ground ? 



Is there a .Snieaton peerage ? or a Herscliel barony ? No — no. Let 

 us have then an Exposition, like the French, and by honesty and worth 

 neutralize, not destroy the magpies and rooks, the Cul peppers and 

 Monteagles of this day ; he then who saves a human life will not be in- 

 sulted by a threepenny copper or parchment reward. 



Again, the same person suggested to the Admiralty the means of 

 making use of the then waste liquor of the charcoal burners for gun- 

 powder works, and also an apparatus for making it on shipboard in 

 the South Seas and other localities where salt might be scarce, for 

 preserving pork and other meat and fish by injection thereof, and 

 further, as a substitute for vinegar. He w.is little better than laughed 

 at under John Wilson Croker's enlightened direction of the Admiralty, 

 yet less than a quarter of a century thereafter he saw a trading ma- 

 nufacturer, to whom the hint had been given by an Admiralty clerk, 

 enter into contracts for it, sell it, and raise thirty thousand pounds by 

 it; and further sees its now universal adoption in the army, navy, and 

 domestic life as better than vinegar! But enough, I am prepared to 

 fill your whole impression, if required, with gross, palpable, unques- 

 tionable facts, amply developing the absolutely crying want of such a 

 stimulus to, and refuge for, individual worth, no matter what its object 

 or grade of life; and, with reference to its commercial effects, the 

 mind can scarcely expand in proportion to the picture : the curse of 

 the cheap shop system and bad goods for exportation where the best 

 are required, — forgt d cutlery and plate marks, &c., would be so far 

 checked, that, at the Leipzic Fair a knife or razor from Sheffield, and 

 a gun from Birmingham, should not be as now, looked upon with 

 scorn: Buenos Ayres should not again reject our barter — the Chinese 

 laugh at our trash, or the East ludiaman demand before he buys, the 

 broker's guarantee. 



My guinea is at any time ready towards this great undertaking, 

 which, as long as history lasts to tell the nation's name on the map of 

 time, will cairy ils projectors' fame to every man's door for every 

 man's praise; my mite is Iminble, but my time and my pen shall join 

 your endeavours freely. 



At present, we have no body which merits the name of a Public 

 Institution of the Arts, though several tin kettle little-goes assume it. 



I am. Sir, with sincere belief in the success of the attempt, and a 

 full conviction of its worth, yours, 



WiLHKLM DE WlNTERTON. 



November 8, 1844. 



I Mr. W. MarriB Dlnsdale, to whom ttie navy Is Indebted for an asiimllation of the 

 diet of Beamen to that of landBnien— In llie UBe ot tea. coffee, sugar, pyroligneous vinegar, 

 &c.— as the only rational means of preventing sea scnrvy. This person also suggested the 

 use of register wreck buoys, to denote cases of foundering at sea ; post-office packet sal- 

 vage buoys, and buoyage for securing the sea mails from loss, &c. &c. twenty years ago, 

 and incessantly repeated their value to every successive Postmaster General io vain I 



To Make Caoutchouc iMPERMKAnun to Gas.— M. Chovreul has shown 

 that linseed oil placed on the external surface of the caoutchouc renders it 

 impermeable to gas. 



