In the present state of our information respecting the important question of the resistance of fluids, we must receive almost every principle deduced from it, with the greatest circumspection and caution. We regret, as we have before remarked, our inability to furnish any satis factory information on the subject ; but we should only have misled our readers had we not honestly confessed the state of our knowledge on this great question. We might have enlarged very much, it is true, this part of our article, by some elaborate theoretical investigations, and perhaps have shown their coincidence with certain particular experiments. But no real and solid informa tion would have been gained from trains of analytical in vestigation, which, at the moment of their practical ap plication to naval architecture, seem almost, as Mr. Harvey expresses it, " to lose their identity," leaving nothing behind but the regret, that so much labour and earnest zeal should have produced so little that is useful to man, for the purposes of shipbuilding.
We regret, however, that our limits will only merely allow us to allude to the experiments performed at the Greenland dock, in the years 1795, 1794, 1795, 1796, 1797, and 1798, by a Society instituted expressly for the noble and patriotic purpose of improving naval archi tecture. These experiments amounted to nearly 10,000 in numeer, and were published under the auspices of the Society in a thin quarto volume, now become very rare. The labour must have been immense; and we gladly record our warm admiration of the industry and zeal that animated the members of this most useful So ciety. In the introduction to this article, we alluded to the advantages that would result from the establishment of a Society expressly devoted to the cultivation of naval architecture, both in theory and practice. We yet hope to see this accomplished ; and we are sure that when ever that great object may be accomplished, its founders will not overlook the labours of the ingenious members of the Society above alluded to.