is curious to note how, amid the tossing of the ocean, her name became gradually obliterated, till it was totally effaced, a type of the progressive decay and final destruction of the vessel herself. At first she is properly reported to Lloyd's as the _Virago_; the next ship makes her out to be the _Argo_; still later her cognomen is cut down to the --_go_; and then the name disappears until the French find her upon their strand. Here we suppose her half-obliterated papers were found, and our neighbours, according to their usual wont, transmute the _Virago_ into the _Neroggogi_. From these reports it is evident that a number of large vessels passed quite close to the wreck, and it is even probable that a collision may actually have occurred, and no one have been left to tell the tale. In some cases, where the circumstances of wind and current are favourable, water-logged ships are taken in tow by other vessels and become valuable prizes. When, however, these wrecks are in such a condition that it is clear they cannot be brought in, we think it would be well if they could be destroyed. A few pounds of powder, judiciously placed, or a beam or two sawn across by the ship's carpenter, would break the bond that binds these logs together, and, once separated, they would not be likely to do much damage. Many disastrous wrecks can be distinctly traced either to a defective compass, or to an ignorance of the effects upon it of the magnetism of the ship's iron. There is a melancholy example in the loss of H.M.S. _Apollo_, of thirty-six guns, in 1803, with forty sail of merchant ships, out of a convoy of sixty-nine vessels, bound for the West Indies. The _Apollo_ was leading the way, with her train of outward-bound sugar ships following in her wake, little suspecting the catastrophe which was to follow. At the very moment her defective compasses drove her ashore, she imagined she was some forty miles off the coast at Portugal, and so close was the merchant fleet upon her, that upwards of half of them took the ground and were dashed to pieces. More recently we have had the instances of the _Reliance_ and _Conqueror_, wrecked near Ambleteuse, on the French coast, in sight of the cliffs of Albion, after voyaging from India. The former is known to have had an immense iron tank on board, the influence of which upon her compasses must have been very great. The _Birkenhead_, wrecked near the Cape of Good Hope, and the ship _Tayleur_, in the Irish Channel are additional instances of the destruction to which the trembling finger of the magnetic needle points the way, where ignorance or wilfulness have placed impediments to its truthful action.