precision the nature of the vessel’s stability. A treatise by Euler, entitled _Scientia Navalis_, was published in 1749, and a little later, stimulated by prizes offered by the Société Royale des Sciences, Don G. Juan in Spain, Euler in Russia, and Daniel Bernouilli in Germany, all published the results of their investigations into the forces acting on a rolling ship. Euler’s contribution was especially valuable. Treating the ship as a pendulum he laid down two definite rules for the guidance of shipbuilders, (1), not to remove the parts of a ship too far from the longitudinal axis, (2), to make the most distant parts as light as possible. Up to this time the discoveries of the mathematicians had had little practical effect on shipping. The abstruse form in which new truths were published, and the lack of education of the shipbuilders, prevented that mutual collaboration which was necessary if the art of shipbuilding was to benefit by the advances of science. Soon after 1750, however, a succession of able men, possessed of imagination and initiative, led inquiry into practical channels, and by actual trial proved, incidentally, that much of the accepted theory was faulty. The Chevalier de Borda, a naval captain and a member of the Academy of Sciences, investigated with models the resistance of fluids to motion through them, and enunciated laws which shook confidence in current beliefs. The result was a commission from the government to three eminent men, M. D’Alembert, the Marquis Condorcet and the Abbé Bossut, to report on and continue de Borda’s investigations. The report, read by the Abbé before the Academy in 1776, confirmed generally de Borda’s theories, and revealed new problems--in particular, the alteration in shape of the free water surface and the effect of wave resistance, the latter of which was ultimately to be solved in this country by Mr. W. Froude--that required investigation. The circumstances of this commission illustrate the enlightened interest of the State in the advancement of knowledge, significant testimony to which was paid by Abbé Bossut. “M. Turgot,” he said of the Comptroller-General of Finances, who took responsibility for it, “who is not only an admirer of the sciences, but has pursued the study of them himself amidst his numerous important official functions, approved of our intentions, and granted every requisite for prosecuting them.”