h the aid of a good museum the student is enabled to
take a bird's-eye view of the whole chain of progress, in which the
existing state of things constitutes but a link.

Signs are not wanting that the competition with which British shipowners
had to contend in the past will again become active in the near future.
The advantages conferred upon us by abundant supplies of iron and by
cheap labour will not last for ever. There are many who expect, not
without reason, that the abolition or even the diminution of protection
in the United States will, when it comes to pass, have the same
stimulating effect upon the American shipbuilding industry which the
abolition of the old navigation laws had upon our own; and when that day
comes Englishmen will find it an advantage to be able to enter the
contest equipped with the best attainable technical education and
experience.

CHAPTER II.

ANCIENT SHIPS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN AND RED SEAS.

It is not difficult to imagine how mankind first conceived the idea of
making use of floating structures to enable him to traverse stretches of
water. The trunk of a tree floating down a river may have given him his
first notions. He would not be long in discovering that the tree could
support more than its own weight without sinking. From the single trunk
to a raft, formed of several stems lashed together, the step would not
be a long one. Similarly, once it was noticed that a trunk, or log,
could carry more than its own weight and float, the idea would naturally
soon occur to any one to diminish the inherent weight of the log by
hollowing it out and thus increase its carrying capacity; the subsequent
improvements of shaping the underwater portion so as to make the
elementary boat handy, and to diminish its resistance in the water, and
of fitting up the interior so as to give facilities for navigating the
vessel and for accommodating in it human beings and goods, would all
come by degrees with experience. Even to the present day beautiful
specimens exist of such boats, or canoes, admirably formed out of
hollowed tree-trunks. They are made by many uncivilized peoples, such as
the islanders of the Pacific and some of the tribes of Central Africa.
Probably the earliest type of _built-up_ boat was made by stretching
skins on a frame. To this class belonged the coracle of the Ancient
Britons, which is even now in common use on the Atlantic seaboard of
Ireland. The transition from a raft to