16 
so as to form a moveable platform on which the rock was 
mounted. There were two pairs of under beams, so that 
as the rock advanced it would rest successively on them. 
The platform with the rock was drawn forward simply 
by blocks and pulleys with ropes attached to the stone 
and to piles in the ground at proper distances as it advanced. 
By these simple contrivances this vast rock of 2,000 tons 
was transported from its original bed to the water side, 
and thence on a barge placed between and supported by 
two ships of war, and carried to its present situation in 
Petersburgh. Considering that this mass was transported 
with ease and safety so great a distance on those tiuo 
beams (on iron balls in metal troughs as above described), it 
seems reasonable to infer that the “ Leviathan ” ship of 
10,000 tons weight might have been mounted on similar 
balls and beams increased in number say to ten beams, 
and then it could have been speedily and safely launched 
with a trifling cost compared with what is said to have 
been expended on the plan adopted. 
Upon the question of friction the Chairman remarked 
that our ordinary experience affords no means of estimating 
the exact amount of the resistance to motion by iron 
surfaces rubbing over each other and pressed down by the 
enormous weight of the “ Leviathan.” The experiments 
hitherto made for measuring the friction of rubbing surfaces 
have been confined to cases where the pressure was com- 
paratively trifling. Hence the propriety of employing a 
plan like that above described for transporting bodies of 
such vast magnitude, instead of a system the success of 
which must from the first have been a matter of uncertainty. 
A detailed account of the apparatus above referred to is 
given by Compte Marin de Carburi, in a work published 
in Paris in 1777. 
The first part of a paper was read “ On the Folk-lore of 
Lancashire, and its relation to that of the Greeks, the 
Romans, the Saxons, and the Danes, ” by Mr. T. T. 
Wilkinson, F.R.A.S. 
