T. J. Buckton.
Lichfield.
Footnote 4:[(return)]
"Eadem ratio, ab honestate ducta, eandem pepererat apud Romanos legem. Gellius ex Fabio Pictore, Noct. Attic., lib. x. c. 15., de flamine Diali: Scalas, nisi quæ Græcæ adpellantur, eas adscendere ei plus tribus gradibus religiosum est. Servius ad Æneid, iv. 646. Apud veteres, Flaminicam plus tribus gradibus, nisi Græcas scalas, scandere non licebat, ne ulla pars pedum ejus, crurumve subter conspiceretur; eoque nec pluribus gradibus, sed tribus ut adscensu duplices nisus non paterentur adtolli vestem, aut nudari crura; nam ideo et scalæ Græcæ dicuntur, quia ita fabricantur ut omni ex parte compagine tabularum clausæ sint, ne adspectum ad corporis aliquam partem admittant."—Rosenmüller on Exod. x. 26. The ascent to the altar, fifteen feet high, was by a gangway,
כבש
.
THE SCREW PROPELLER.
(Vol. ix., p. 394.)
Anon. is clearly mistaken in thinking that, when Darwin says that "the undulating motion of the tail of fishes might be applied behind a boat with greater effect than common oars," he had any idea of a screw propeller. He meant not a rotatory, but, as he says, an "undulating" motion, like that of the fish's tail: such as we see every day employed by the boys in all our rivers and harbours, called sculling—that is, driving a boat forward by the rapid lateral right and left impulsion of a single oar, worked from the stern of the boat. It was the application of steam to some such machinery as this that Darwin seems to have meant; and not to the special action of a revolving cut-water screw.