COPIES OP AFFIDAVITS. 21

a boat then lying in the Forth and Clyde Canal , inthe county of Stirling, aforesaid , did "witness an ex-periment made with the said boat, propelled by thesaid engine, under the direction of the said’ WilliamSymington . That it consists with the knowledge ofthe deponent that the said boat was moved upon thecanal, by means of the said engine, a considerablenumber of miles, but the deponent cannot charge hismemory with the precise number. That the deponentbelieves the motion produced in the said boat, bymeans of the said engine, was equal or similar to thatproduced by the engines of a like power now in com-mon use in steam navigation. That, some time there-after, the deponent made a complete model of thesaid boat and steam engine, all under the direction ofthe said William Symington . That the deponentthereafter witnessed various experiments made by thesaid William Symington in the years 1802 and 1803,which the deponent knows to have had an equal orgreater success than the preceding experiments.

Sworn at Edinburgh , the twenty-seventh day ofOctober, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-four, before me, one of his Majesty’s Justices ofthe Peace for the city of Edinburgh .

(Signed) James Blackte.

Amxaiidee.Hehdep.son, J.P.

8. David Drysdale, residing in Bainsford, in thecounty of Stirling, in that part of the United Kingdom called Scotland , mariner, maketh oath and sayeth,—That in the month of October 1789, he acted as helms-man on board of a boat then lying in the Forth andClyde Canal , in Stirlingshire, aforesaid. That thisboat had been built upon a particular construction,and was propelled upon the water by means of a steamengine. That the deponent understood that WilliamSymington, Civil Engineer, now residing at Falkirk ,