speed has been indefinitely extended. The
comfort of the passenger, equally with the safety of the hull, demands
the diminution of the vibration nuisance in modern steamships, and
whether the first attempts to cater for the need by turbine-engines be
fully successful or not, there is no doubt whatever that the fast mail
packets of the future will be driven by steam-engines constructed on a
system in which the turbine principle will form an important part.

Further applications will soon follow. It is clear that if the
steam-turbine can be advantageously used for the driving of a vessel
through the water, then, conversely, it can be similarly applied to
the creation of a current of water or of any other suitable liquid.
This liquid-current, again, is applicable to the driving of machinery
at any rate that may be desired. In this view the slowing-down
process, which involves elaborate and delicate machinery when
accomplished in the purely mechanical method, can be much more
economically effected through the friction of fluid particles.

One method of achieving this object is an arrangement in which the
escaping steam drives a turbine-shaft running through a long tube and
passing into the water in a circular tank, in which, again, the shaft
carries a spiral or turbine screw for propelling the water. The
arrangement, it will be seen, is strictly analogous to that of the
steam-turbine as used in marine propulsion, the shaft passing through
the side of the tank just as it does through the stern of the vessel.

One essential point, however, is that the line of the shaft must not
pass through the centre of the circular tank, but must form the chord
of an arc, so that when the water is driven against the side by the
revolution of the screw it acts like a tangential jet. Practically the
water is thus kept in motion just as it would be if a hose with a
strong jet of water were inserted and caused to play at an obtuse
angle against the inner side.

Motion having been imparted to the fluid in the tank, a simple device
such as a paddle-wheel immersed at its lower end, may be adopted for
taking up the power and passing it on to the machinery required to be
actuated. By setting both the shaft carrying the vanes for the
steam-turbine and the screw for the propulsion of the water at a
downward inclination it becomes practicable to drive the fluid without
requiring any hole in the tank; and in this case the latter may be
shaped in an