are employed. Convicts, however, are still employed in excavating and building new docks further up the harbour.

Of course we visited Brunel's block machinery, which shapes from the rough mass of wood, with wonderful accuracy and speed, the polished block fit for use. Huge lathes were at work, with circular saws and drills, sending the chips of wood flying round them with a whizzing and whirring sound. So perfect is the machinery that skilled artizans are not required to use it. Four men only are employed in making the shells, and these four can make with machinery as many as fifty men could do by hand. On an average, nineteen men make one hundred and fifty thousand blocks in the course of the year.

Leaving the block-house, we went to the smithy, where we saw Nasmyth's steam hammer, which does not strike like a hammer, but comes down between two uprights. On one side is a huge furnace for heating the material to be subjected to the hammer. Papa asked the manager to place a nut under it, when down came the hammer and just cracked the shell. He then asked for another to be placed beneath the hammer, when it descended and made but a slight dent in the nut.

Soon afterwards a huge mass of iron, to form an anchor, was drawn out of the furnace; then down came the hammer with thundering strokes, beating and battering it until it was forced into the required shape, while the sparks flying out on all sides made us retreat to a safer distance.

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One of the largest buildings in the dockyard is the foundry, which is considered the most complete in the world. We looked into the sheds, as they are called, where the boilers for the ships are constructed, and could scarcely hear ourselves speak, from the noise of hammers driving in the rivets. Many of the boilers were large enough to form good-sized rooms.

We walked along

the edge of the steam basin. It is nine hundred feet long, and four hundred broad. The ships, I should have said, are built on

what are called the building slips, which are covered over with huge roofs of corrugated iron, so that the ships and workmen are protected while the building is going forward.

Before leaving we went into the mast-house, near the entrance to the yard. Here we saw the enormous pieces of timber intended to be built into masts-for masts of large ships are not single trees, but composed of many pieces, which are bound together with stout iron hoops. Here also were the masts of ships in ordinary. They would be liable to decay if kept on board exposed to the weather. Each mast and yard is marked with the name of the ship to which it belongs. The masts of the old Victory are kept here, the same she carried at Trafalgar. Not far off is the boat-house, where boats from a large launch down to the smallest gig are kept ready for use.

We looked into the Naval College, where officers go to study a variety of professional subjects. When papa was a boy the Naval College was used as the Britannia now is-as a training-school for naval cadets. Finding an officer going on board the Excellent—gunnery ship-we accompanied him. We were amused to find that the Excellent consists of three ships moored one astern of the other, and that not one of them is the old Excellent, she having been removed. Our friend invited us to accompany him on board an old frigate moored a little way up the harbour, from which we could see some interesting torpedo experiments.

As we pulled along he gave us an explanation of the fish torpedo-a wonderful instrument of destruction which has been invented of late years. It is a cylinder, which carries the explosive material at one end and the machinery for working the screw which impels it at the other. It can be discharged through a tube with such accuracy that it can strike an object several hundred yards off. On getting on board the old frigate, we found a large party of officers assembled. We were to witness

the explosion of two other sorts of torpedoes. One was used by a steam launch, the fore part of which was entirely covered over by an iron shield. The torpedo was fixed to the end of a long pole, carried at the side of the launch. At some distance from the ship a huge cask was moored, towards which the launch rapidly made her way. The pole, with the torpedo at the end, was then thrust forward; the concussion ignited it the instant it struck the cask and blew it to fragments.

Another launch then approached a large cask floating with one end out of the water to represent a boat. An officer stood up with a little ball of gun-cotton in his hand, smaller than an orange, to which was attached a thin line of what is called lightning cotton, the other end being fastened to a pistol. As the launch glided on he threw the ball into the cask. The boat moved away as rapidly as possible, when the pistol being fired, in an instant the cask was blown to atoms. What a fearful effect would have been produced had the innocentlooking little ball been thrown into a boat full of men instead of into a cask!

Another experiment with gun-cotton was then tried. A piece, not larger than a man's hand, was fastened to an enormous iron chain fixed on the deck of the ship. We were all ordered to go below, out of harm's way. Soon afterwards, the gun-cotton having been ignited by a train, we heard a loud report; and on returning on deck we found that the chain had been cut completely in two, the fragments having flown about in all directions.

The chain of a boat at anchor was cut by means of a piece of gun-cotton fixed to it, and ignited by a line of lightning cotton fired from one of the launches. This showed us how the chaincable of a ship at anchor might be cut; while a torpedo boat might dash in, as she was drifting away with the tide and the attention of her officers was engaged, to blow her up.

The chief experiments of the day were still to come off. We