appearance of these Buoys excites our admiration;
but let no one, for an instant, suppose
that there is any mere notion of "ornamental
art" in these varieties. Each has its special
post; so that if you took Master Long Sand
Head this morning, and made him change
places with Master South-East Goodwin,
before to-morrow morning there would be a
score of wrecks and no end of confusion in
ships' reckonings- in fact, any exchange suddenly
made would produce extraordinary
disasters. But who is this? Master Aldborough
Knapes! This ingenious young
person presents the appearance of an enormous
kitchen candlestick, the foot and entire
pedestal of which remain under water when
he is on duty, by which means he is ballasted
and kept in an upright position. His peculiar
faculty, and the cause and consequence of his
singular shape, is that of being able to dive
under a ship's bottom, and instantly bob up
again on the other side, as if nothing had
happened. As he is in a position which
renders him very liable to be run over at
night, and even by day, he finds this peculiar
faculty very convenient. This White Buoy,
supposed to be of Irish origin, which lies in
the same horizontal attitude when at sea, and
displays a similar insignia upon his iron rods
above, is Master South Margate; and this
prodigious black Humming Top, who stands
bolt upright, with a small iron circle exhibited
on the top of a structure of iron bars fixed
into his flat head, is Master East Margate!
We beg tli at our presentation to the rest of
these floating sentinels may be postponed to
another visit, as we have now many other
things to see. The Buoys, in reply, quote
Dr. Johnson, as we are informed, and say,
"They can wait!"

We have mentioned our friend Captain
Poulter, as the godfather of all these big
buoys; but he stands in a yet nearer and
dearer relation to many of them, the invention
and design of which are attributable to
him, under the advice of the Board, and
their fabrication having taken place under his
immediate eye. Not only does he give each
of them a new coat (of many colours), and
a new breeching, too, every six months, but
he has instituted a change in the structure
of those made of wood, which tends to preserve
the coat in its original purity for a
much longer period than before its adoption.
Formerly the wooden buoys used to be bound
with iron hoops, and, notwithstanding the
paint, they soon corroded sufficiently to emit
streaming stains of rust, so that a white buoy
shortly became a mottled buoy, and eventually
almost a Red Indian. The change and preservation
of the coat has been effected by an
internal arrangement of wood-work, as hold-fasts
and strengtheners, so that all the outer
hoops and iron-work are dispensed with; yet,
such is the dread of innovation in the sage and
mature mind of maritime authority, that it
took the little interval of seventeen years to get
this improvement brought into general adoption.
But buoys, made entirely of wrought-iron,
have subsequently been introduced
among the fleet of wood, and are found to
have advantages in certain localities. The
last improvement proposed by the Superintendent,
and adopted by the Board, is the
construction of a larger-sized buoy of wrought-iron,
as a three-decker- or having three compartments,
each air-tight, so that in the event
of a ship dashing against it, and bursting
in one compartment, the buoy would still
float by means of the air in the other
compartments. These buoys are of the
enormous size of seventeen feet in height,
and one of them is twenty feet. We should
not omit to state that a buoy is made to
retain its upright position by means of a lower
division, or cell, which has a hole in it below
to admit the water, with an air-hole above;
by means of which water-weight at the lower
end, the buoy is ballasted. This lower division,
whether in wood or iron, is called the ballast-bag.
By similar means a buoy is made to
float horizontally or aslant, as may be most
suitable to circumstances. A buoy is kept
in its place by a large chain affixed to a ring
at the bottom, which descends the requisite
number of fathoms, when it is fastened to a
large flat iron slab, called a "sinker," as well
it may be, for it weighs twelve hundred
weight: and sometimes, where the situation
is exposed to the violence of winds and
tides, as much as two tons. There are occasions,
also, when a mushroom anchor is employed,
which weighs nearly this amount,
having besides a holding property, that would
render it impossible to be dragged by any
amount of force which the buoy could experience,
or his chain endure.

The importance of the chain being of an
ascertained and reliable strength for a given
purpose, is obvious, and we should not omit to
mention the means that Captain Poulter adopts
for testing and proving every chain used for a
buoy, or supplied to any of the light- ships in
the service. The required amount of strength
being known, he causes the chain to be tried,
by appending weight to it far greater. If the
force required, for instance, amount to a strain
equal to eight or ten tons, he applies a weight
of twenty tons. In general, he tries each chain
up to sustaining a weight of thirty tons,-
eighty tons being known as the fair breaking
point. If a chain has undergone the ordeal
of thirty tons uninjured, he then examines
every fathom, link by link, and selects any
one link that appears, in the least degree, to
suggest an imperfection, or to be, in the least
degree, less strong than the rest. The chain
is then taken to an anvil, and this particular
link being singled out, two blacksmiths with
massive hammers continue to strike it, cold,
in successive blows. It may be beaten into
triangles, squares, octagons, ovals, and finally
flattened, and cut away from the chain; but
it must not break, split, or show a flaw. If