NA TORE 



'iNov. II, 1880 



clearly how vain have been the prejudices, and how 

 baseless the predictions, which condemned ships of this 

 type as incompatible with even moderately good speeds, 

 and as ridiculous when the attainment of high speed was 

 contemplated. It is with no small feelings of vanity, but 

 with a genuine pride in a great scientific triumph which 

 we ventured to predict beforehand, that we have witnessed 

 the Livadia^ s success. It is a success which England 

 may well envy, and of which the Russian Government 

 may well be proud. Its bearing upon the future of steam 

 navigation cannot fail to be considerable even in the 

 mercantile marine, while it is quite impossible for the 

 war navies of the world to escape its influence. Our long- 

 standing objections to the Inflexible and Italia types of 

 ship are well known to our readers, the construction of 

 such ships under the name of first-class ironclads being 

 most trying even to the common sense, and much more to 

 the scientific sense, of the country. With the IJvadia in 

 existence, and with the facilities \\hich such great breadth 

 as hers offers to the production of armoured ships worthy 

 of the name, the exposure of our first-class ships to the 

 destructive effects both of shells and of torpedoes, will 

 not be endured. We congratulate Admiral Popoff upon 

 the established success of the great idea which he was the 

 first to propound, and as the idea would still have remained 

 a mere idea but for the powerful patronage of the Grand 

 Duke Constantine, we gladly recognise again the scientific 

 acumen and that "courage of his opinions" which 

 distinguish His Imperial Highness. By consenting to the 

 trial of so great a naval experiment in a yacht of his own, 

 the Emperor of Russia has secured a sea-palace of great 

 speed, of unexampled accommodation, and of a freedom 

 from rolling and pitching such as no other ship in the 

 world enjoys. 



On the last-named points— those of pitching and rolling 

 — we have to record very remarkable results. We are 

 informed on the best authority that in the gale in the 

 Bay of Biscay, with waves running over twenty feet 

 high, when ordinary vessels were seen rolling and 

 pitching heavily, and even when the gale and the 

 sea were at their highest, the greatest roll to leeward 

 was 5 degrees, and that to windward 4 degrees, while 

 the greatest pitch was 4 degrees and the greatest '"scend" 

 3 degrees. This extreme limitation of motion was most 

 extraordinary, excluding almost all the usual incidents of 

 sea-hfe. Nothing was secured on board, and nothing fell 

 throughout the storm. There were occasionally heavy 

 blows of the sea under the flat shallow bow, and these 

 caused much vibration at times ; but nothing was dis- 

 turbed, and even the paint is nowhere cracked throughout 

 the wood-built cabins and palaces of the ship. 



In the accident which the Livadia met with on her 

 voyage from Brest to Ferrol, by striking heavily down- 

 wards upon some floating object or objects during a heavy 

 gale in the Bay of Biscay, with a high and confused sea 

 running, the value of water-tight subdivision has been 

 sti'ikingly demonstrated. The injuries done by the blows 

 were extended by the heavy strokes of the sea under the 

 bluff bow, and several of the forward compartments were 

 filled. A scientific friend who inspected the bow after 

 the compartments were pumped out in the harbour of 

 Ferrol, informs us that in two or three places the bulk- 

 head divisions had evidently been badly struck and made 



leaky at the bottom, and in one compartment the sea was 

 plainly visible through the broken plating. And yet 

 nothing was known on board of these injuries when at sea 

 beyond the fact (ascertained by "sounding") that a for- 

 ward compartment of the double bottom had been some- 

 how filled, so effectually was the ship proper preserved 

 from all injury within the double bottom, and so little 

 effect had the filling of the forward spaces upon the trim 

 and behaviour of the ship ! The Livadia is constructed of 

 steel, and is as lightly built as our own fast steel ships of the 

 latest date ; and as a similar accident to the recent one 

 might occur again, as it may to any ship of light draught 

 and great buoyancy, it would no doubt be prudent to add 

 something to the strength of the outer bottom where 

 most exposed to strains and blows ; but this is a matter of 

 detail which we leave the naval architect to discuss. The 

 great lesson to be derived from the incident is the 

 immeasurable value of double bottoms and of great 

 compartmental subdivision in sea-going structures. An 

 ordinary large steam yacht not so subdivided might have 

 been lost under like circumstances, and certainly would 

 have been more or less jeopordised and more or less injured 

 internally ; in the present case not a particle of injury to 

 the interior of the ship or to her costly fittings was sus- 

 tained, and hours after the accident, with a verj' high and 

 confused sea still running, the Lord High Admiral of 

 Russia and his guests dined as safely, as easily, and 

 almost as quietly as if he had been ashore in his summer 

 palace of Orianda. 



A MEDICAL CATALOGUE 

 Index Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-Generals 

 Office, U.S. Army. Vol. i.. A— Berliiiski. 4to, pp. 

 888. (Washington : Government Printing Office.) 



THE saying of Hippocrates, that art is long and time 

 is short, is so true, not merely of medical art, but 

 of work in general, that most working men find their 

 lives gliding so quickly away that they do not attempt 

 great works, and very probably would not succeed if they 

 did so. But every now and then we come across men 

 whose energy is so marvellous, and whose power of 

 getting through work is so enormous, that we are struck 

 with amazement at it. Such a man is Dr. Billings, to 

 whose extraordinary energy and perseverance we owe the 

 present work. This purports to be only a catalogue of 

 the Library of the Office of the Surgeon-General of the 

 United States Army, and Dr. Billings takes care to call 

 attention to the fact that it is not a complete medical 

 bibliography, and that any one who relies upon it as such 

 will commit a serious error. " It is," he says, " a cata- 

 logue of what is to be found in a single collection ; a 

 collection so large, and of such a character, that there 

 are few subjects in medicine with regard to which some- 

 thing may not be found in it, but which is by no means 

 complete." It is not, however, a mere catalogue in the 

 ordinary sense of the word, inasmuch as its contents are 

 not confined to the names and titles of books and their 

 authors. It is also a catalogue of subjects, so that any 

 one wishing to read up a particular subject will find 

 under the appropriate heading a list of the chief works 

 bearing upon it. Nor is this all. There are other cata- 

 logues in which a similar arrangement has not only been 



