ON SHIP IV A VES. 473 



are conveyed 1 in light boats, about sixty feet 

 long and six feet wide, made of thin sheet iron, 

 and drawn by a pair of horses. The boat starts 

 at a slow velocity behind the wave, and at a 

 given signal it is by a sudden jerk of the horses 

 drawn up on the top of the wave, where it moves 

 with diminished resistance, at the rate of 7, 8, 

 or 9 miles an hour." 



Scott Russell was not satisfied with a mere 

 observation of this kind. He made a magnificent 

 experimental investigation into the circumstances. 

 An experimental station at the Bridge of Her- 

 miston on the Forth and Clyde Canal was arranged 

 for the work. It was so situated that there was a 

 straight run of 1 500 feet along the bank, and, in 



1 This statement was made to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 

 1837, and it appeared in the Transactions in 1840. Almost before 

 the publication in the Transactions the present tense might, alas ! 

 have been changed to the past "passengers were conveyed." Is 

 it possible not to regret the old fly-boats between Glasgow and 

 Ardrossan and between Glasgow and Edinburgh, and their beautiful 

 hydrodynamics, when, hurried along on the railway, we catch a 

 glimpse of the Forth and Clyde Canal still used for slow goods 

 traffic ; or of some swampy hollows, all that remains of the 

 Ardrossan Canal on which the horse and Mr. Houston and Scott 

 Russell made their discovery ? 



