Fig. 3 illustrates a steam launch, and Fig. 4 an electric launch fitted with electrical appliances and compartments containing a means for carrying and discharging electrical torpedoes. By the employment of such means, and a well-organized system of coast defense, it will be practically impossible for hostile vessels to land troops, or to inflict a serious damage upon shipping or seaport towns. Any extent of coast or estuary can be thoroughly protected by launches, light vessels, and appliances operated from fixed electrical stations, supplied with power and means of operation from any point, however distant. For carrying such a system into practical operation, the cost will, it is claimed, be but a tithe of what would be required for placing an inefficient system of fixed mines and forts, or for building men-of-war for coast defense, as men-of-war are practically defenseless against a greater number of high-speed launches equipped with movable and controllable torpedoes, the reasons for which are obvious, as a sufficient number of such launches would cover a greater distinctive range than the vessel which depended upon the range of its guns, or those combined with uncontrollable torpedoes. NEW ELECTRIC GAS LIGHTER. Let not the epithet "Perpetual," which the inventor applies to the little apparatus that we are about to describe, frighten the reader, for its only purpose is to indicate that the instrument in question is capable of operating indefinitely, without care and without there ever being any need of taking it apart. [Illustration: Fig. 1--PERPETUAL GAS LIGHTER.] In this gas lighter the inflammation is produced by a small spark, but this latter, instead of being obtained by means of a pile, which, after a certain length of time, has to be mounted anew or entirely renewed, is secured by borrowing the energy produced by the operator pressing upon a button. It is, then, in reality, a _mechanical_ lighter in which electricity intervenes as an intermedium charged with the transformation of work into sufficient of a spark to produce inflammation. Thanks to this principle, and to the arrangement of the apparatus, there is secured cleanness, safety, and economy. The lighting is reduced, then, to opening the cock and placing the extremity of the rod over the burner, or over the edge of the glass in burners provided with a chimney. Upon pressing the button and then freeing it, a spark leaps between the two points and lights the gas. (Fig. 1.) [Illustration: Fig. 2.--A, cylinder with lighting rod, G. B, movable cylinder fixed upon the axis, E. D, handle containing a rack actuated by a button, F.]