forty fathoms water. These light-ships ride by chains of a peculiarly prepared and toughened iron; and in heavy weather the strain on the moorings is relieved by paying out fathom after fathom, until sometimes the whole cable (at the Seven Stones, 315 fathoms) is in the water. These vessels, of course, are manned by sailors, and the discipline is that of shipboard; but here, as on shore, the burden of the main story meets us at the first clause of the instructions—"You are to light the lamps every evening at sun-setting, and keep them constantly burning, bright and clear, till sun-*rising," unless you break adrift, and then, if you have shifted your position before you could bring up with your spare anchor, you are to put them out and wait till you can be replaced.
Among the curiosities of lighthouse experience are these two. The one that it is an occupation in which the modern claim for feminine participation has been forestalled. There is at this moment a woman light-keeper, and as she retains her employment it may be inferred that she does her duty properly. The other is an odd fact, namely, that so far back as the last century the rationale of the cod-liver oil fashion was fore-*shadowed at the "Smalls." As in the wool-combing districts of Yorkshire, where the wool is dressed with oil, consumption and strumous affections of the like character are rare, so it is said that people going out to the "Smalls" as keepers, thin, hectic and emaciated, have returned plump, jocund, and robust, on account of living in an unctuous atmosphere, where every breath was laden with whale oil, and every meal might be enriched with fish.
The French, from economical reasons, early gave their attention to the use of seed oils, and the first developments of the moderator lamp of the drawing-room are exclusively French. There were many difficulties in the way of applying it to lighthouses until it had been greatly simplified, because the fact of the carcel lamp being a somewhat complicated piece of machinery was against its use in places where, if anything went wrong, it might be a month or two before the weather would admit of the light-*keepers being relieved, and give them an opportunity of exchanging old lamps for new. The thing was done at last by a simple but very beautiful adjustment of the argand reservoir, under which the prime condition for all good combustion was attained, namely, that the oil just about to be burnt, should be rarefied and prepared for burning by the action of the heat of that which is at the moment being consumed. And so great is the quantity of oil used in the three kingdoms, that this change from sperm to rapeseed oil must have made a saving of many thousands a year.
But if oil from its portability and comparative simplicity has become the standard material for light in lighthouses, and has been the object of a thousand and one nice adaptations in regard to its preparation and the machinery by which it is consumed, the attention of very able men has been given to other sources of illumination.
One of these was known as the Bude light, and consisted of jets of oxygen introduced into the centre of oil wicks, producing an intense
