can be conferred by heredity in such a case, entered into business on the Clyde. Although the compound engine had been invented and in mining use in Cornwall at the close of the eighteenth century, it was left for John Elder to see the vast possibilities of the application of the principle to marine work. Previous to his time the steam pressure used in marine boilers was about 7 Ib. per square inch, and the difficulty in introducing the compound design lay principally in the deeply rooted prejudice existing against high pressures at sea. In 1853, however, Messrs. Randolph, Elder, and Co commenced the innovation entailing the most radical departure from former practice. I well remember the opposition set up, alike by owners and the engine-room staff, and I watched with much interest the steady, if not rapid, triumph of high initial pressure and expansion to extreme limits in separate cylinders. John Elder died in 1869, at the early age of forty-three. Had he survived to the present day, what would he have seen as the result of his sound judgment of fifty years ago? He would have seen marine boilers carrying steam at 280Ib. to the inch, and expanding in three or four stages through five cylinders, with piston-speeds of 900ft. per minute. He would have seen the consumption of fuel at sea reduced from more than 6 Ib. per horse-power per hour to less than 1 Ib. And, solely as the outcome of these results, he would have seen the Atlantic Ocean virtually a ferry, crossed by more than half a million of passengers last year, and our own colony, for the Panama service of which he built the “Rakaia,” served with steam-liners not one of which would have been possible under the old system. And, lastly, he would have seen the cargo-steamer “Inchmarlow” carrying 1 ton one sea mile by the combustion of one-third of an ounce of coal, which, taking the price' at 15s. per ton, is equivalent to carrying 1 ton 550 miles for 1d. But the most startling innovation in the marine engine is undoubtedly the steamturbine of the Hon. Mr. Parsons. By this means velocities have been reached of forty-three statute miles per hour, with an utter absence of that vibration which, at high speeds, is at once so distressing and destructive. Whether the steamturbine can be applied to an Atlantic liner remains to be seen. There are several drawbacks inherent to the design, the principal of which is the impossibility of reversing the turbine, so that separate machinery has to be provided for going astern, and which is allowed to run loose when the vessel is going ahead. It is certainly not in its favour that, even in the small vessels in which this turbine has been tried, the power has to be applied through three propeller-shafts, each with three screws, the whole revolving at the enormous velocity of two to three thousand revolutions per minute.