206 
APPENDIX. 
of receiving from him an encouragement of the hopes I 
had conceived of my apparatus. The following is an 
extract from his letter to me: — 
“ The certificate subjoined to your remarks is most 
satisfactory ; and if the line used in your experiment be 
equal to those usually employed, it evinces a degree of 
power in the gun, of which the harpoon at present in use 
is totally incapable. The best harpoon guns, with which I 
am acquainted, are capable of projecting a harpoon in a 
point blank direction only about twenty yards ; and then 
the harpoon usually penetrates obliquely, and occasions 
such a large wound as renders the instrument liable to 
draw.’* 
This opinion of Captain Scoresby renders it incumbent 
upon me to declare, that the experiments which I have 
made with my harpoon assure me that, with a gun of less 
weight than any now in use and much shorter, I can 'project 
my harpoon attached to a rope of the usual size, thirty yards in a 
point blank direction. 
The flight of the harpoon for that distance is quite direct ; 
and the wound made by it can consequently be no greater 
in size than the girt of the weapon. This I have proved : 
the plank through which it was fired, contracting, as wood 
always does, after a sudden and violent perforation, pre- 
sented a hole less in diameter than the instrument that 
made it. 
I have to add (in allusion to the end of the extract from 
Captain Scoresby’s letter) that, whatever other objections 
may be urged (though I hope and trust none can) against 
the harpoon which I have invented, it can never be alleged, 
that it will be liable to retraction through the wound which 
it shall have made in piercing the fish. From its construc- 
tion, I pronounce such an accident to he impossible. If, then, 
there were no other benefit gained by my plan, this would. 
