306 EXPERIMENT AT CARRON.

with my father’s operations, and to establish thepriority of his claims to the credit of having ori-ginated, and carried into practical execution, animprovement in the nautical art, by far the mostimportant of which the present age has to boast;and the ultimate effects of which, on the futureintercourse of mankind, the most sanguine imagi-nation would attempt in vain to predict,”