claims in connection with the monitor type of warship are never likely to be seriously questioned. Taking Ericsson's life and work, what portion remains as a permanent acquisition or as a part of the practice of the present age? This is a question which merits at least a moment's notice. We should not make the mistake of thinking that permanency is necessarily a test of merit, or that the value of his services to the world should be judged by such parts of his work as are plainly apparent in the practice of the present day. A piece of work must be judged by the circumstances which brought it forth, and by the completeness and perfection of its adaptation to the needs and possibilities of its age. We have then the steam fire-engine; compressed air which he early employed in England, and which has become an instrument of enormous importance in connection with the industrial progress of the age, although this is in no especial degree due to his efforts; the surface condenser, distiller, and evaporator are a permanently and absolutely essential part of modern marine practice; the screw-propeller has almost sole possession of the field of marine propulsion; modern marine engines and boilers in naval practice are always placed below the water-line and are protected by deflective deck armor and frequently by coal as well; the turret has become a permanent and accepted part of the practice of the age, while the monitor type in its essential feature seems to be evanescent. The modern battleship is a vastly more complex structure, and represents more complex ideas and combinations than did Ericsson's "Monitor." It contains a battery of guns of the heaviest type known to naval ordnance. At present such guns are usually of 12-inch bore and throw a shell of about 800 pounds weight, with an initial velocity of nearly 3,000 feet per second. Then there is a supporting battery of guns, 6, 7, or 8 inches in diameter of bore, and finally a secondary battery of smaller quick-firing guns, throwing shells of from 1 pound to 20 or 30 pounds weight, and added to these there may be a torpedo outfit as well. The exigencies of fighting ships at sea and in all weathers seems to have pronounced against the monitor type with its low freeboard as unsuitable for use on the open sea, while the enormous advances in modern guns and armor have made a totally different problem of the distribution of means offensive and defensive. Again, the monitor type was never intended for long cruising, or indeed for other service than the defence of coasts and harbors. The policy of building a vessel thus adapted only to an inner line of defence, and not adapted to an outer line of defence and offence as well, has been further called in question, and the judgment of the present day has decided against such policy. It is true that in the so-called "new navy," begun in 1883, one monitor, the "Monterey," has been built, while four others of older