88 Mr Miller on the Invention and Practice 
on the comparative velocity of his vessels with those propelled 
by sails, or by ordinary oars, which had given occasion to se- 
veral interesting and animating contests for superiority, he had 
strongly felt the necessity of employing a higher force than that 
of the human arm, aided as it might be by the ordinary me- 
chanical contrivances ; and, in this view, various suggestions 
were successively adopted and laid aside. Thus, at one time, 
it occurred to him that the power of horses might be usefully 
employed ; while, at another, the aid of the wind itself seemed 
to furnish the means of counteracting its own direct and ordi- 
nary operation. But among all the possible varieties of force, 
that of steam appears to have presented itself to his mind, as at 
once the most potent, the most certain, and the most manage- 
able. 
And here it is that I experience a heartfelt satisfaction in re- 
cording the merits of a most ingenious, as well as modest and 
worthy man, who then resided in my father’s family as the tu- 
tor of two of his younger sons, and whose thoughts had been 
much turned towards the improvement of the steam-engine. 
To Mr James Taylor’s enthusiasm my father always professed 
himself indebted for assistance in his favourite pursuits ; and 
it was in the very heat of a keen and breathless contest, in 
which they were one day engaged with a custom-house boat, 
on the Leith establishment, that Mr Taylor called out to my 
father. That they only required the help of his steam-engine to 
beat their antagonists. 
This casual and random ejaculation was not lost on my fa- 
ther. It led to many subsequent discussions on the practica- 
bility of this application of force, in the course of which various 
expedients were thought of for overcoming the most obvious 
mechanical difficulty, — that of converting a direct rectilinear in- 
to a rotatory motion, and the no less obvious danger from fire, 
in certain states of the weather ; but it was under a very con- 
fident anticipation of the success of the experiment, that my fa- 
ther alluded to the subject in his publication of February 
1787. 
In making his first experiments, he deemed it advisable, in 
every point of view, to begin upon a small scale ; yet a scale 
quite sufficient to determine the problem which it was his ob- 
