WATER AND WATER NAVIGATION. 
77 
late, and fighs for the loved and the loft, for the dead 
that fhall never return ! Alas, poor hearts! 
If mechanical dotation be poftible in air, why not in 
water ? If water reptiles, the cruftacea, and fifties can 
float themfelves by mechanical means, why not veftels 
that are propelled by fteam ? Would it be any harder to 
propel the fteamer towards the Iky than ftraight ahead ? 
And if there were propellers enough about the boat, and 
the right kind of propellers, and fixed in the right places 
about the fhip, and connected with the fteam-engine in 
the right way, and placed at the proper angle to propel 
towards the Iky, wouldn’t they lift the fhip, and couldn’t 
this lifting power be made fo great as to keep the veflel 
from going down even though leaking and full of vyater ? 
If it could be done, we might flop making a grave¬ 
yard of the ocean. Why can’t it be ? 
All the water-creatures that are lighter than water are 
under juft as much neceflity of employing mechanical 
force to travel down through the waters, as the heavier 
ones are to travel up : fo it feems to come to about the 
fame thing for both of them. Getting through the water 
is a mechanical matter any way; and it takes no more 
force apparently to make the heavy creatures float than it 
does to make the light creatures sink. 
Why, then, can’t we have Mechanical Flotation for 
Steamfhips ? 
I am afraid there are a great many people yet who 
