March 19, 1885] 



A A TURE 



455 



the armour to a depth of at least 6 feet below the normal 

 water-line, and as much deeper as individual cases would 

 allow. It is evident, therefore, that the ships of the 

 Admiral class are deficient in this respect unless and 

 until their unarmoured ends are flooded. 



Fig. 4. — Collingwood. 



Reverting to the still more important question of height 

 of armoured freeboard (i.e. the height of the top edge of 

 armour at side above the water), we will now give some 

 figures. The Agamemnon, with her armoured freeboard 



of g feet 6 inches in the uninjured condition, can be in- 

 clined to the angle of 16 degrees before the top edge of 

 her armour touches the water, as shown by the dotted 

 line in Fig. I : and even when her unarmoured ends are 

 Hooded, and her freeboard therefore reduced to 7 feet 8 

 inches, she can still be inclined (assuming for the moment 

 that she would still have stability) to the angle of 13-f 

 degrees before her armour is brought beneath the water ; 

 this is shown in Fig. 3. But the Collingwood has so ridi- 

 culously shallow a partial belt (only 2 feet 6 inches above the 

 water in the uninjured condition) that an inclination of only 

 4j degrees causes her armour to disappear altogether in 

 smooth water. When her ends are flooded her armoured free- 

 In lard is actually reduced to no more than 12 J inches, which 

 is as much as to say that at sea she would have no armoured 

 freeboard at all in that condition, for an inclination of but 

 if degrees is sufficient to bury her armour completely, 

 even in smooth water. The two conditions of the 

 ' 'od are shown in Fig. 2 and Fig. 4 respectively. 



These alarming facts, thus clearly brought into view 

 are of themselves sufficient to explain Sir Edward Reed's 

 distrust of the Admiral class of ship, and his very strong 

 condemnation of these ships can be readily understood 

 when we remember, further, that in his opinion the 

 excessive shortening of the armoured part in the whole of 

 these ships has introduced such elements of danger into 

 them as to render them unfit to take their place in the 

 line of battle, even apart from the considerations pre- 

 viously set forth. 



THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 

 Proceedings of the American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science {Thirty-Second Meeting), held at Min- 

 neapolis, Minn., August, 1S83. (Salem: Published by 

 the Permanent Secretary, 18S4.) 



THE record of the proceedings of the thirty-second 

 meeting of the American Association forms a 

 volume considerably less bulky than that issued by the 

 British Association, as it consists of 598 pages, the corre- 

 sponding volume of the older Association numbering 884 

 pages. The difference between the two volumes, as 

 records of science, is about in the same proportion. Ad- 

 dresses, reports, and abstracts of papers take up 46S 

 pages in the book before us, while in the Southport 

 volume the same subjects occupy 660 pages. In printing 

 and paper the American volume is decidedly the superior 

 of the British, but, as a set-off, it is issued in a paper 

 cover; the price, however, is only i'5o dollars. The 

 smaller size of the volume is accounted for by the fact that 

 considerably fewer papers appear to have been read before 

 the American Association than before the British. We 

 note also another point of difference, certainly not to the 

 advantage of the American volume : the reports on the 

 state of science, so conspicuous and valuable a feature 

 in the British volume, are remarkable in the American 

 chiefly by their absence. We venture to suggest to the 

 officers and Committee of the latter Association that they 

 would add largely. to its importance and stability by de- 

 veloping this branch of its work. At the present time, 

 when scientific societies for special purposes are so nume- 

 rous, their meetings and journals will always compete 

 successfully with those of an all-embracing Association 

 such as the British and others formed on a similar plan 



