If the
lights were clear of each other, then the ships would pass safely.

Sir James Douglass asked if his Lordship had made any experiments.

The Lord Advocate said he had not. The Board of Trade had such a number
of inventions on this subject on hand that he supposed they were already
disgusted. Besides, he was only an amateur, and left the carrying out of
the suggestion to others.

Sir James Douglass said this idea of a lantern did very well for a short
distance, but for a long distance it utterly failed. It was very
difficult to realize a movement from a distance of over a mile out to
sea, and signals were required to be visible for from two to three
miles.

The Lord Advocate said his idea depended not upon the object light, but
upon the sweep of the light on the water.

Sir James Douglass said all those questions were of the utmost
importance to a maritime country. In regard to experiments with oil on
troubled water, he had witnessed them, and he had carefully studied all
the reports, and had come to the conclusion that they were all very well
in a tub of water or a pond, but on the ocean they were utterly
hopeless. He would stake his reputation on that. They had been tried in
the neighborhood of Aberdeen, and he had prophesied the results before
they were commenced. It was utterly hopeless to think that a quantity of
oil had the power of laying a storm--all the world could not produce oil
enough to bring about that result.

There might be something in maritime telegraphy, and he hoped the
experiments of Mr. Graham Bell, in transmitting through two or three
mile distances, would come to something. He did not believe in powerful
lights. Increase the lights to any very great extent, and a dazzling
effect was the result. In regard to sound, he wondered that no more
effective alarm was used than the whistle. It was well known that, as
the whistle instrument was enlarged, the sound became more and more a
roar. He would have ships use all their boiler power in sounding a
siren, so that the sound could be heard at a distance of not less than
two or three miles in any weather. With such a signal as that there
ought to be, not absolute safety, but collisions would be more easily
prevented. He was glad to say that a universal system of buoys had been
practically arranged, thanks to the Duke of Edinburgh and his committee,
so that, as soon as an old system can be changed to a new one, all the
buoys would bear one unive