and forty minutes, he began to take small supplies of _pure_ air from his reservoir, and did so, as he found occasion, for four hours and twenty minutes. At the expiration of this time he came to the surface, without having experienced any inconvenience from having been so long under water.” Fulton’s boat is pretty evidently the original from which Jules Verne took the idea of his wonderful submarine ship, the _Nautilus_. It was utilised for an important torpedo experiment, and a shallop was successfully blown up at Brest in the presence of Admiral Villaret and other officials. The submarine boat approached within two hundred yards of the hull which was to be destroyed, and fired its torpedo under water. The French Government employed him for a time to cruise about and watch our vessels, but no opportunity seems to have occurred for any attack, and he was evidently looked upon as a failure. In 1803, a correspondence passed between the English Government and Fulton, and he was induced to come to London, where he had an interview with Mr. Pitt and Lord Melville. “When Mr. Pitt first saw a drawing of a torpedo, with a sketch of the mode of applying it, and understood what would be the effects of its explosion, he said, that if introduced into practice, it could not fail to annihilate all military marines.” Fulton accompanied an expedition sent against the French flotilla in the roads of Boulogne, where his torpedoes were launched, but did no damage. On the 15th October, 1805, he blew up a strongly built Danish brig, of the burden of 200 tons, which had been provided for the experiment, and which was anchored in Walmer roads, near Deal; within a mile of Walmer Castle, the then residence of Mr. Pitt. He has given an interesting account of this experiment in a pamphlet which he published in this country, under the title of “Torpedo War.” In a letter to Lord Castlereagh, of the 16th October, 1805, he says, “Yesterday, about four o’clock, I made the intended experiment on the brig, with a carcass of one hundred and seventy pounds of powder; and I have the pleasure to inform you that it succeeded beyond my most sanguine expectations. Exactly in fifteen minutes from the time of drawing the peg and throwing the carcass into the water, the explosion took place. It lifted the brig almost bodily, and broke her completely in two. The ends sunk immediately, and in one minute nothing was to be seen of her but floating fragments. Her mainmast and pumps were thrown in the sea; her foremast was broken in three pieces; her beams and knees were thrown from her deck and sides, and her deck planks were rent to fibres. In fact, her annihilation was complete, and the effect was most extraordinary. The power, as I had calculated, passed in a right line through her body, that being the line of least resistance, and carried all before it. At the time of her going up she did not appear to make more resistance than a bag of feathers, and went to pieces like a shattered