After all, it must be acknowledged that attempts hitherto made to obviate the evils of sea-sickness by novelty in design fall very far short of attaining the beneficent results sought after. The _Bessemer_, the _Livadia_, the _Calais-Douvres_, and other _unique_ craft primarily conceived with regard to this end, are now, it would seem, exemplifying in their latter fate the futility of the endeavour. Such attempts, however ill-advised they may possibly appear in the light of the knowledge their very failure or their partial successes yield, have still their creditable and praiseworthy aspects. The spirit which has prompted some of them is not wholly one of money-making, and their histories enrich the general fund of experience far more than libraries of untried theories. Shipowners are too ready to shut their minds against everything which seeks the _acme_ of comfort and safety by other means than those which guarantee _economical_ success, or those which consist in increasing the size and power, and enhancing the accommodation of conventional types of vessels. These novelties and innovations, on the other hand, represent more of the intrepidity essential to genuine advancement than is forthcoming in a thousand merchant ships of the conventional type. Happily the need for such enterprise as is involved in at once departing from tried types, has within recent years been largely, if not altogether, obviated, through improved procedure in the work of design. The more thoroughly analytic process of investigation and experiment now in vogue, greatly curtails the number of novelties introduced, or which reach the constructive stage. Many present-day projects never get beyond the “paper stage,” which in times not so far distant would have spelled out “failure” to the very last letter. Since the system of model experiment has begun to be practised in a reliable manner, and since theoretical prediction generally has become better appreciated, over-sanguine inventors have been spared the penalties of failure in actual practice, and ingenuity has been reclaimed or warned away from channels that would inevitably have proved chimerical. List of Papers bearing on the safety and comfort of modern steamships, to which readers desiring fuller acquaintance with the _technique_ and details of the subjects are referred:— ON THE NECESSITY OF FITTING PASSENGER SHIPS WITH SUFFICIENT WATERTIGHT BULKHEADS, by Mr Lawrance Hill: Trans. Inst. N.A., vol. xiv., 1873. ON WATER AND FIRE-TIGHT COMPARTMENTS IN SHIPS, by Mr Thomas May: Trans. Inst. N.A., vol. xiv., 1873. ON CAUSES OF UNSEAWORTHINESS IN MERCHANT STEAMERS, by Mr Benjamin Martell: Trans. Inst. N.A., vol. xxi., 1880. ON MODERN MERCHANT STEAMERS, by Mr James Dunn: Trans. Inst. Naval Architects, vol. xxiii, 1882. ON BULKHEADS, by Mr James Dunn: Trans. Inst. N.A., vol. xxiv., 1883. ON PUMPING AND VENTILATING ARRANGEMENTS, by Mr Thomas Morley: Trans. Inst. N.A., vol. xvii., 1876.