It has been ascertained that the actual weight of a seventy-four gun-ship, including the hull, rigging, guns, stores, officers and men, together with six-months’ provisions, amounts to two thousand eight-hundred _tons_, and the quantity of water displaced when the ship is afloat is equal to about one hundred thousand cubic feet. The stowage of large ships is admirable. The live-stock often forms a considerable item in a ship’s stowage. It is generally for the use of the officers, and consists of cows, sheep, pigs, and poultry. The latter, and sheep, are stowed away upon the main-deck, under the waist, between the guns; and the pigs in that part of the ship called the manger, on the lower or gun-deck; the cows are kept in boxes or stalls; the sheep in pens, in one or two tiers; and the poultry in hen-coops. The whole are under the charge of the butcher and poulterer. I could tell you a great deal more about ships and shipping, but space prevents me doing so; and as a great many of our ships are now engaged in the war against Russia, it will not be out of place to hope that our brave sailors may not be “savagely slaughtered” by the Russians, and that the Great Bear may have his claws clipped before we have done with him. [Illustration] Manufacture of Ropes. Hemp is a plant belonging to the same species as the moss and nettle, and the quantity used in Great Britain is prodigious. Latterly a large quantity has been grown in Ireland, and one of the chief objects of the Irish Industrial Exhibition of last year was to promote the indigenous growth of Flax and Hemp. An acre of land in Ireland produces on an average thirty-six or thirty-eight stone of hemp, and the season for sowing it extends from the 25th of March, to the 15th of June. What the muscles and sinews are to the human frame, and what wings are to birds, ropes and sails are to ships. Their manufacture is at all times of the greatest consequence to our country, and the celerity with which they can be produced, is one of the wonders of this mechanical age. The materiel for a great deal of our cordage comes from Russia, and more than a million of pounds, of which sixty-three make a ton, are annually imported to this country; their value is estimated at something more than half-a-million sterling. It comes over in large bundles weighing nearly a ton each, which are separated into heads or layers, each containing twelve or fourteen pounds of hemp.