408 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



[December, 



essential pait of bis system, lie makes but little mention. In Ibe con- 

 struction of a railway on tbe liydraulic propulsion plan, they wouki, 

 we conceive, figure ratlier prominently among tlie items of expendi- 

 ture, and add very materially to tbe engineering " difficulties " of 

 any line of railway. The erection of immense towers 2UU ft. high 

 every 200 yards, would present formidable obstacles to the trial of 

 such a mode of railway propulsion, even did it present theoretically 

 much greater advantages than those claimed for the hydraulic ; and 

 unless our views are exceedingly erroneous, the plan could never be 

 practically carried into execution, in consequence of the immense 

 waste of power which every pait of it presents. We liave, we think, 

 pointed out sufficient instances of this waste to justify our opinion, 

 but on reading over Mr. Shuttleworth's " plain statement " others will 

 be found which we have not thought it necessary to enumerate. Ob- 

 jectionable as Mr. Shuttleworth's first plan of the hydraulic railway 

 appeared, we consider it far preferable to his " improved" mode of 

 employing the water propulsively. The principle of exhaustion, on 

 which it depended, is more simple, and its etFects would be more cer- 

 tain, and produced with vastly less expenditure of power. 



We regret to be obliged to decide so unfavourably on the claims of 

 an invention which bears evident marks of great ingenuity and labour; 

 but we consider it much more to the interest of an inventor, who has 

 been milled by the application of erroneous data, to endeavour at 

 once to convince him of bis error, than to indulge fallacious hopes, 

 which can only end in more bitter disappointment. 



THE ARCHITECTURAL SOCIETIES. 



Sir — In this age of novelty, locomotion, and substitution of new- 

 powers for those approved in days of yore, can we wonder at anv 

 of the attempts made by Ecclesiastical Commissioners, of whose 

 "crusade against the employment of architects" T. H. W. so justly 

 complains, or other Joint-slock societies, such as one recently es- 

 tablished in the North, which professes to follow the Oxford and 

 Cambridge architectural societies, and that they should submit to 

 them any plans which may be made for building new churches, or for 

 restoring old ones, as prepared by their builders or their builders' 

 clerks, (lor arcliitects will be out of the question,) under their imme- 

 diate direction and dictation; albeit their knowledge is obtained en- 

 tirely from Glossaries and other books, which are compiled from 

 works, sometimes possibly correct, but more freqaentiy artistical plates, 

 made for effect only, and when examined and compared with the 

 work intended to be represented, cause the inquirer to think whether 

 a wrong plate may not have been bound up with the work by 

 mistake ; there will be of course much experimentalizing by the new 

 parsonage house commissioners, and the builders in many places will 

 have to conform to the views of their architect, who composes his 

 plans by the fire-side, for why need he trouble himself about local 

 peculiarities, and what cares he about the gaping and wondering of the 

 country boobies, at seeing a trim brick and plaster house, built upon 

 a stone quarry, when the material excavated from the cellars, would 

 have built the walls of the house at half the expense, and twice the 

 durability ; the rage is now all for a bit of Gothic, or at least Eliza- 

 bethan, for possibly a work publislied a few years ago, (the "Princi- 

 ples of design in architecture,") has tended to put away the " Gothic 

 and tasty" lintels cut up to a peak over a door, when a'horizontal one 

 would have been stronger and produced a better etTect ; formerly the 

 indented battlement or parapet was all the rage, now the pointed 

 gables, as irregular as it is possible to make them — one in the en- 

 trance front with windows ranged like a ship's port holes, and much 

 in the same proportion, and tlie other close to it in the same line 

 with a huge projecting chimney stack, covered with mouldings and 

 sliield?, for what purpose only known to the designer. Strips of wood 

 cut into holes of all shapes, quatrefoil, trefoil and wavy, according to 

 Rickman, barge hoards, (certainly as appropriate as the rest of the 

 structure in such a situation,) placed under each of the gables — now 

 the Architectural Societies intend to co;;y and to restore ; at least so 

 they say: but when are they to give their knowledge? The prospectus 

 of the new Yorkshire Society contains the names of two architects 

 only, and neither of them attended the Autumn meeting. Tno meet- 

 ings are to be held in the year, and from the information given at the 

 last, it appears, that for general accommvdatimi, they are to be in the 

 remote corners of the country ; all admitted must be members of the 

 Established High Anglo-Catholic Church! the committee, of young 

 clergymen, and amateurs, who read, and look at pictures, are to be the 

 bets, ' )/ thtij can be gel to work ; all the rest are to be considered as 



' '{he standnrd for all buildings is to be Parker's Oxford Glossary. 



drones, and only called together in the Spring and Autumn, to see the 

 produce of the hive. As far as could be seen after the last meeting, 

 the secretaries constituted the society — two clergymen and a surgeon, 

 the latter rertj young. From this society is to be directed the restoration 

 of the architectural gems of the country, and woe to any architect, 

 who dares venture upon a slight variation, if even better to remove 

 the work of a subsequent period, and restore the earlier and better 

 parts. It is time for the architects to awaken from their lethargy, or 

 if awake, Iheir apathy, as they alone can be expected to guide the un- 

 initiated in the profession, and make them so far of use, that (a's 

 throughout the country there is a feeling in favour of the Ecclesias- 

 tical buildings of the middle ages, evidently the works of the clergy 

 and the'n/ree brethren), they may work together, and discover the 

 source from which the beauties of those temples spring. 



I am, Sir, &c.. 



DR. PAYERNE'S EXPERIMENTS ON THE DIVING BELL. 



[We received from Dr. Payerne, but too late for insertion last 

 month, a letter complaining of our remarks on his diving bell experi- 

 ments. It is but fair to the Doctor to publish his reclamation, to 

 which we shall add a rejoinder, in justice to ourselves.] 



Sir — He who undertakes to treat a subject which he does not under- 

 stand, is liable to fall into the deepest error. Of this truth the 

 reporter of the experiments made by me on different occasions in the 

 diving bell, furnishes, unfortunately for himself, too glaring an instance 

 in the October number of your Journal. I shall not, in order to prove 

 this, lose myself, after his example, in a maze of suppositions all 

 equally gratuitous, not even excepting the emphatic preamble in 

 wliich he exclaims against the whole English press, to whom I tender 

 my sincere thanks for its favourable notice of the success of my ex- 

 periments, a notice which has done me the more honour, as it was 

 altogether unsolicited. 



One idea in which the reporter, as he reverts to it in every line, 

 indulges with much complacency, is the supposed pompous announce- 

 ment by me of the discovery of a new process for generating air by 

 decomposing water, and thereby producing the necessary oxygen to 

 support life. Upon wdiat authentic grounds, I will ask him, does he 

 rest his pretended report ? Is there not reason to believe, until he 

 condescends to reveal its source, that he has attempted wittingly to 

 impose upon the judgment of your readers ? He indeed never will, 

 but I can proclaim its source ; he has collected his notes, not on the 

 spot wdiere the experiments were made, nor in accordance with the 

 principles developed in the esteemed works upon chemistry and phy- 

 siology of which he is ignorant, but in the shop of a third or fourth 

 rate provincial chemist, a declared enemy of Major-General Pasley, 

 who did not think fit to receive, with implicit faith, the light offered 

 to him by this pretender. It shall be my business to show that 

 Major-General Pasley has unvaryingly adhered to the truth, and that 

 the reporter is egregiously ignorant of the commonest laws of pneu- 

 matics. 



The diving bell in which my experiments were made at Spithead, 

 is but 5 feet high, 4 feet long, and 2i feet broad. The seat therein 

 is about IS inches above the bottom, so that our shoulders did not rise 

 above 3 feet 3 inches. These data known, I am obliged, in order to 

 be understood by the reporter, to enter upon a few elementary expla- 

 nations upon the compressibility of air under a given pressure. It has 

 been an established fact, since the period of Mariotte and Boyle's 

 experiments, that all gaseous substances become compressed in an in- 

 verse ratio with the pressure to which they are subjected. It is a 

 fact no less true, that a column of water about 33 feet high, after re- 

 moval of the air above, will counterbalance the terrestrial atmosphere. 

 But when the latter and the column of water simultaneously press 

 with their whole weight upon a gaseous substance or upon air, it be- 

 comes condensed to one-half of the volume which is filled when sub- 

 jected to a single jiressure of one or other of those agents. This law 

 once well understood, it becomes evident that, at the depth of 33 feet 

 of water, subject to the pressure of the atmosphere, the quantity of 

 air contained in the diving bell at the instant of immersion, will be 

 reduced to one-half of its original volume, and that the water will rise 

 to one-half of the height of the diving bell, namely 2i^ feet. If an 

 atmospheric pressure be added to the former twofold pressure, the 

 volume of air, already reduced one-half, will be further reduced by 

 one-third, that is to say, that the water will rise 10 inches higher, or 

 3 feet 4 inches, a height already more than sufficient to immerse us 

 shoulders deep in the water. If to this height be added that which 

 should have been produced by an additional column of S or 10 feet of 



