of lead, she would carry a still greater amount of sail; but with such a shallow boat there would be no accommodation. Speed, that element in design which everybody cries after, whether they be practical scientific yachting men (and there is one thing Great Britain can boast of in her yacht designers, professional or amateur, and that is, they are all, without exception, first-rate helmsmen and seamen), or only graduating in the first principles of yacht-racing, is dependent on many conditions. In the first place, it forbids the presence of all superfluous deadwood, so that the outside surface presented to the water may be all of a useful description (that is, by being part of the planking or skin, or only as much deadwood as is necessary for the strength of the vessel), and the friction caused thereby may be reduced to a minimum. With a hull of large displacement there must naturally be very much greater surface friction than in one of smaller body, and therefore the question will arise--Will not the smaller yacht be the faster of the two? This involves still deeper sifting, because sometimes the smaller yacht will beat the one built on the same length and beam, though she may be very much larger. Before we can choose which of the two kinds of boat will be the better to have for a successful racer, a second great condition has to be looked into and satisfactorily settled. This is nothing less than what kind of waters the yacht will have to race or cruise in. The question of the element water is one very frequently forgotten and lost sight of by those buying yachts, especially second-hand ones; and the purchaser, who perhaps buys a most successful small vessel in the South, is astonished to find that when he has tried her against the local Scotch cracks, her performances prove of a very poor description in comparison, and disappointment is the consequence. Water may be in the eyes of some all the same, wherever it may be, and so it is round our coasts in its smooth state; but when it is set in motion there are scarcely two of our great yachting stations alike, while the seas in our three Channels all vary in form. At the mouth of the English Channel the seas, as soon as the 'chops' are left astern, become regular, are long and deep, and more or less easy for a small yacht to negotiate; that is, she has room to work in and out of them, and at the same time avoid receiving a comber aboard as passenger. As she sails farther up and the channel narrows, the seas become more of the deep ridge and furrow order, steep, narrow, and difficult to sail over, whilst each sea will contain its full weight of water. On nearing Calais the seas have less water in them, but are very short and steep; the consequence is they are more inclined to break. In the North Sea the sea disturbance takes another and larger form, and sailing North becomes still larger, and, of course, wider and deeper, till the Northern Ocean is opened out. St.