The subject deserves more attention than it has hitherto met with.

No discovery relative to carriages has been made in our time of equal importance; and the ingenious author of it deserves highly of some mark of public gratitude."' Maria adds:--'Those ingenious ideas, which had been but the amusement of youth, as he advanced in life, he turned to public utility: for instance, the mode of conveying secret and swift intelligence, which he had suggested at first only to decide a trifling wager between him and some young nobleman, he afterwards improved into a national telegraph, and through all difficulties and disappointments persevered till it was established.

In the same manner, his juvenile amusements with the sailing chariot led to experiments on the resistance of the air, which in more mature years he pursued in the patient spirit of philosophical investigation, and turned to good account for the real business of life, and for the advancement of science.
'On this subject, in the year 1783, he published in the Transactions of the Royal Society (vol.73) "An Essay on the Resistance of the Air," of which the object, as he states, is to determine the force of the wind upon surfaces of different size and figure, or upon the same surface, when placed in different directions, inclined at different angles, or curved in different arches.

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