Although progress in this matter has not been solely due to Government agencies, it may be maintained that a large part of the positive and accurate scientific knowledge which now exists has grown out of the exigencies of the naval service, and has come from sources more or less supported by or connected with Government institutions. It will of course be understood that the science of naval architecture is a field in which many besides shipbuilders, and indeed many besides professional naval architects, have laboured with signal success. The fund of knowledge has been enriched, and the practice of shipbuilding improved, by men whose association with the shipyard has been of an indirect and amateur kind, and—it must be added—whose valuable labours the shipyard has often but scantily recognised. Mathematicians—“mere theorists,” as they have been called—have made original investigations and scientific analyses which have upset many previously received practical notions, and established principles, the appreciation of which alone, has led to subsequent progress in actual practice. The part taken by merchant shipbuilders has consisted in the experimental verification, and sometimes the practical correction of principles thus evolved, but even to this extent the service done has been largely incidental. Those considerations which form the economic basis of every commercial concern have naturally circumscribed such service, and only a few notable firms have been able to break through the common restrictions.