392 POPULAR LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 



Copeland Light, as we learned soon afterwards from 

 our position. My friend fully admitted after that, 

 what he never admitted before namely, that it was 

 possible to confound a lighthouse light with a light 

 on a steamer's masthead ; and soon after, the 

 Holywood Bank, barely visible ten miles off, was 

 recognised by its short-short-long within a quarter 

 of a minute of its being first seen, and gave a 

 triumphant proof of the practical value of its 

 distinctive character. 



With reference to the description of lights and 

 their distinctions in lighthouses, there is, in the first 

 place, to be considered the character 'of the light, and 

 the appliances for economizing of it. The old coal 

 fire on, the cliff, which was the first lighthouse, was 

 a relic of the past, which would never now be set 

 up for the purpose of marking a point on the coast ; 

 yet, practically, where there are blazing furnaces at 

 ironworks, as on the Ayrshire coast in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Ardrossan, these same fires do 

 constitute very important, though undesigned 

 marks by which a mariner discovers his position. 

 The substitution of economical lamps, in which a 



