The false deductions therefore which grew up in our own service are all the more extraordinary, even as we find them in the new instructions and the current talk of the quarter-deck.

But this is not the worst.

It is not till we turn to the Signal Book itself that we get a full impression of the extent to which tactical thought had degenerated and Nelson's seed had been choked.

The movements and formations for which signals are provided are stubbornly on the old lines of 1799.

The influence of Nelson, however, is seen in two places.