6o TRANSACTIONS. 19OI 2 



vessels can run much closer to her than they can to a light on 

 land. 



Buoys. In 1899 there was an International convention 

 on the subject of buoyage, which resulted in the adoption of 

 rules to govern the shapes and colours of buoys. Canada has 

 adopted these International regulations, and all our larger 

 buoys have been made to conform in shape as well as in colour 

 to these International regulations. To make the necessary 

 improvements involved the furnishing of a large number of 

 conical buoys. 



The ingenuity that has been shown in the development 

 of signal buoys is most interesting. The earliest signal buoy 

 is the old bell buoy. I doubt if this has been much improv- 

 ed since the eighteenth century, when. 



The good old Abbot of Aberbrothok 

 First placed a bell on the Inchcape rock, 

 On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung. 

 And over the waves its warning rung. 



When the rock was hid by the surges' swell. 

 The mariners heard the warning bell ; 

 And then they knew the perilous rock. 

 And blest the Abott of Aberbrothok. 



Tempora mutantur. Now the mariners curse a too 

 paternal Government for not having replaced the bell buoy 

 by a lightship or a pile lighthouse ! 



The bell buoy seems specially to appeal to the imagina- 

 tion of poets, perhaps because later types of signal buoys 

 commend themselves rather to the utilitarian than to the 

 sentimental side of our nature. Rudyard Kipling "makes the 

 bell buoy sing, with no lack of imaginative power indeed, and 

 with the vigour that is his chief charm, but emphatically in 

 the spirit of today : — 



They christened my brother of old, 

 And a saintly name he bears ; 

 They gave him his place to hold 

 At the head of the belfry stairs, 

 Where the minster-towers stand 

 And the breeding kestrels cry. 



