=Sixty Years’ Improvements in Steamships.=--A review of what has been accomplished in sixty years in the improvement of transatlantic traffic, given by Sir William H. White in his address at the British Association on Steam Navigation at High Speeds, shows that speed has been increased from eight and a half to twenty-two and a half knots an hour, and the time of the voyage has been brought down to about thirty-eight per cent of what it was in 1838. Ships have been more than trebled in length, about doubled in breadth, and increased tenfold in displacement. The number of passengers carried by a steamship has been enlarged from about one hundred to nearly two thousand. The engine power has been made forty times as great. The ratio of horse power to the weight driven has been quadrupled. The rate of coal consumption per horse power per hour is now only about one third what it was in 1840. Had the old rate of coal consumption continued, instead of three thousand tons of coal, nine thousand would have been required for a voyage at twenty-two knots. Had the engines been proportionately as heavy as those in use sixty years ago, they would have weighed about fourteen thousand tons. In other words, machinery, boilers, and coal would have exceeded the total weight of the Campania as she floats to-day. “There could not be a more striking illustration than this of the close relation between improvements in marine engineering at high speed. Equally true is it that this development could not have been accomplished but for the use of improved materials and structural arrangements.” * * * * *