The evidence appears to be satisfactory as to the scientific
working of the great scientific machines which have been tried for the first time before Alexandria. The Inflexible ' and the Tem6raire,' at least, have been worked. with as much skill and exactitude as if they had been engines of peace, instead of engines of war. The Inflexible' carried 80-ton guns, nearly twenty-seven feet in length, i.e., as long as a rather long room, and weighing as much as a heavy railway train. Her turrets are so arranged that the whole of her armament may be fired either in the line of the keel or abeam, as best suits the need. Mr. Renders hydraulic apparatus is used both to rotate her turrets and to fire her guns, and this machinery seems to have been used with the most perfect accuracy. Apparently it was only the 'Inflexible ' and the Tem6raire ' which were found up to the work of destroying Fort Ada and Fort Pharos, which the less heavily armoured ships had not succeeded in silencing. The Temdraire,' though inferior in force to the 'Inflexible,' was equally •well commanded and served ; iudeed, these two ships seem to have inflicted the most serious injury on the forts against which they fired, without receiving any themselves. Science, of course, could have done little, without pluck; but pluck, in such a case as this, could have done nothing at all, without science.
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