each. They are capable of going closer to the wind than 
any ordinary yacht. The spread of canvas they make is, 
as you can see for yourselves, enormous, and they will live 
in exceedingly heavy weather ; but they give in sometimes. 
Three years ago the boat Jane succumbed to a fearful 
cross sea, and sank within two hundred yards (one hundred 
fathoms) of Penzance pierhead, and drowned her crew of six 
men and a boy, not only within sight of their own hbmes, 
but within sight of their wives and children, who knew what 
boat she was. But even in that case, the men who knew 
said she was lost because she had not sufficient canvas on 
her to force her through the sea. 
If one of these boats is overpowered by the sea, she 
takes down her spars and makes them and her nets and 
such of her sails as she can afford to risk into a kind of 
raft, under the slight shelter of which she rides out the 
gale ; but you will find on the “ Cornwall Stall ” a sugges¬ 
tion for a very great improvement in this method. The 
exhibitor is a Cornishman, and he calls it a “ floating 
anchor.” It consists of a beam of timber to which is 
attached a large square piece of canvas, to which is attached 
another beam of timber from which there trails away a 
perforated zinc can which finds its place, when at work, in 
the cavity of a cone made of canvas, fastened to a wooden 
hoop. When the boat is storm-pressed she lowers her 
masts, heads up to wind, and hoists the whole machine 
out ahead of her and makes fast to the first beam ; and 
then, being deeper in the water than the machine, she 
drifts astern and down the wind towing the anchor, the 
outer beam of the anchor stretches the canvas sheet, and is 
assisted in doing this by the cone which it is dragging mouth 
foremost. The cone meanwhile is receiving from the zinc 
can, oil which exudes from it, and which the cone itself sends 
