the description of ancient authors than any solution that has yet been given."

"I shall now," he continues, "show how remarkably it agrees with Athenæus; thus taking in the whole range and applying to all, a thing it could never do were it not near the truth. The tesseraconteres having," he adds, "forty banks, five oars to a bench, makes her have two hundred oars of a side, or four hundred in all. Considering her size, she could not have less than ten men to an oar." The Liburnia of Caligula, according to the testimony of Suetonius, had, he states, that number of men to an oar, forgetting that she was a single-banked galley, and consequently he comes to the conclusion that that number was attached to each of the four hundred oars in Philopater's ship, which "gives four thousand, the number mentioned by Athenæus." Here again he overlooks the greatly increased difficulty or impracticability of placing ten men at each of the lower tier of oars.

Now, while there can be no doubt that all vessels had their ports placed obliquely in cases where there were more than one tier of oars; that they were vessels of five tiers of oars thus placed and no more, and that the Grecian trireme had one hundred and fifty rowers, and the Persian two hundred, it is clear from the descriptions of ancient authors, that there were many triremes of much smaller dimensions, especially from the facility with which they were hauled upon the beach: while there were, no doubt, others carrying even more men than the galleys he refers to. But presuming Mr. Howell to be correct in his supposition, that a trireme derived her name from having three rows of five tiers and no more, as he illustrates, then a bireme would derive her name because she had only two rows of five tiers, thus:

No practical man, however, could entertain the idea that ten oars arranged as he suggests would be equally efficient to a similar number in single lines or even in double tiers; nor would a galley of this size be nearly so efficient as she would be with her ports in a horizontal, line,

• Thucydides (Bloomfield), vol. i. cap. xciv. p. 514, etc., etc.,; and vol. i., pp. 30 and 32.

for she would be much too high in proportion to her length. Similar remarks apply with nearly equal force in the case of triremes.

The perusal of ancient authors, as well as experience, leads to the conviction, that galleys from the unireme to the quinquereme inclusive, had their oars arranged, not merely in oblique vertical rows, but also in horizontal rows, according to circumstances. Besides, the plan illustrated on the Nineveh marble is much more practicable than the one suggested by the theory of Mr. Howell. A galley with only ten oars on a side would be more efficient if they were placed as follows:

than if arranged in the manner suggested by Mr. Howell. Nor would they occupy more space, the saving of which, no doubt, induced the ancients to increase the number of tiers. It is only, however, when three banks and upwards are applied, that there is any very material saving of space. Thirty oars, for instance, placed obliquely in three rows in midships, would occupy much less space, and would consequently give greater accommodation for troops or stores, than would be the case if the same number of oars were placed in a single horizontal

row.

As the galleys of the ancients must have varied very much in their capacity and dimensions, it would be more reasonable to suppose that, from the unireme to the quinquereme inclusive, they derived their names from the number of oars placed horizontally ever each other, rather than from the number of oblique rows as suggested by Mr. Howell. That is to say, though a trireme bore that name because she had three tiers of oars placed thus,

she was, nevertheless, still a trireme, though she had four, five, ten or twenty oblique rows of oar-ports, only she would be a trireme of a larger size, just as we have or had frigates-single-decked vessels, which have varied in size from 600 to 6000 tons. A trireme might therefore be a much more powerful vessel than a quadrireme or quinquereme. On

a similar principle, a quadrireme would have four horizontal tiers of oars, as follows:

but, as in the case of the trireme, she would still be a quadrireme, only of a larger size, if she had more than four oblique rows. There is, however, a limit beyond which oars could not be worked when placed over each other in any fashion. That limit would be reached at the fifth horizontal row, and for the reasons already named, a sixth row, however obliquely placed-for obliquity has also its limits-would be useless. Therefore, while a quinquereme had five horizontal rows, and the same number of oblique rows formed a quincunx, thus:

the galley, it would appear, acquired another name when she had more than five of these oblique rows. For instance, vessels with six oblique rows were, in our opinion, called hexiremes; with seven rows, septiremes; with eight rows, octoremes, and so forth; up to Ptolemy Philopater's tesseraconteres. That the number of men placed on board the ships of the ancients was regulated as at present by the work they had to perform, and by the size of the ship, there can be no doubt; but the number of men had nothing in itself to do with the class or grade of the galley. In some triremes there may have been frequently not more than fifty rowers, and in others five hundred. Our theory does not require the number of men to harmonize with the number recorded by Polybius, Athenæus, and other authors, to have been employed in the different rated galleys of the ancients. In the trireme, which is described as having thirty oars and one hundred and fifty rowers, it would not be necessary to place five men at each oar, as Mr. Howell has done, to make his theory harmonize with this account. Six men to each of the oars of

the highest bank, five to each oar of the second, and four men to each oar of the third bank, would give the requisite number of one hundred and fifty rowers, who would be far more effective than if placed in the manner he describes. In the case of the quinquereme, which, according to Polybius, had three hundred rowers, instead of placing six men, presuming there were no reliefs, to each of her fifty oars, our theory, while it equally solves the difficulty created by the statement of Polybius-a difficulty which could arise in quinqueremes with so large a crew as three hundred rowers,-is one which could be carried out with much more practical effect; for, by placing on the 1st bank 8 men × 5=40; 2nd, 7, X 5 35; 3rd, 6, x 5 = 30; 4th, 5, 5 25; 5th, 4, × 5 20; there would be 150 on each side, or 300 rowers in all, as represented in the transverse midship section of what a quinquereme. really must have been. (Fig. 2.)

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(To be Continued.)

BEFORE AND AFTER.-WHAT WE WERE AND WHAT WE

ARE.

THE following statement shows the position of British Commerce, Navigation and Finance, before and since the Adoption of Free Trade and the Repeal of the Navigation Laws :

:

The real value of British imports can only be ascertained since the year 1854. In that year they amounted to £152,389,053, whilst they had increased in 1865 to £271,072,285, and in 1870 to £303,257,493. The real values of the exports from the United Kingdom in the years 1854, 1865, and 1870 were

...

244,080,577

The real values of these exports cannot be given previously to 1854, as such values of Foreign and Colonial merchandise were not ascertained until that year.

1

The real value of exports of British and Irish manufactures during the years 1842, 1853, 1865, and 1870 respectively, was—