Statistics of Portsea and Portsmouth Dockyard.

[The following are the observations on Lady Bentham's letter, referred to in the foot note at p. 350, vol. xvi., as having been forwarded by the Secretary of the Portsmouth and Portsea Literary and Philosophical Society, from John Fincham, Esq., late Master Shipwright of Her Majesty's Dockyard, but omitted from want of space.]

As the Portsmouth and Portsea Literary and Philosophical Society has been pleased to refer to me a paper written by Lady Bentham, and read before the Statistical Section of the British Association on the 13th of September last, with a view to my furnishing any remarks in answer thereto, I beg to allude to the following facts which have led to the production of the paper in question by Lady Bentham.

You are aware that when I had the honour to be the President of that Society the Committee was pleased to entrust to me the task of preparing a Statistical Report of the Government Establishments here, to constitute a part of the Society's general report on the Statistics of the Island of Portsea." The difficulty of obtaining exact information to the extent required in the departments with which I was not immediately connected, obliged me ultimately to confine my attention to the statistics of the dockyard. The extremely voluminous character of official correspondence and documentary information from which alone many historical facts of interest could be gleaned, coupled with the small amount of time which could be devoted to that undertaking, obliged me also to restrict myself to selections from those documents. These conditions gave a character of incompleteness to my paper which I had no means of avoiding.

It appears, moreover, that an inaccuracy was fallen into regarding the time at which an increase was made in the salaries of dockyard officers in the place of certain perquisites, including apprentices with premiums, which had before been allowed to them. This has been pointed out by Lady Bentham in the paper already referred to.

Her ladyship, further, in that paper, enters with laudable enthusiasm into a discussion of the part taken by her late husband, Brigadier General Sir Samuel Bentham, in the various forms of improvement effected in Portsmouth dockyard about the close of the last and beginning of the present century. It is probable that the details of information on this subject were accessible exclusively to Lady Bentham and the persons at the Board of Admiralty, as he, being the chief officer in a distinct department, corresponded immediately with the Board, which accounts for the fact that copies of his letters were not found in the dockyard books, whilst copies of letters relating to his proceedings, addressed by the Admiralty to the Resident Commissioner of the dockyard, were often met with. Copies of all the official correspondence of Sir Samuel Bentham having been retained in his own possession, remained, as it appears, after his

death, along with his private papers, in the hands of his widow. Thus it is that Lady Bentham is acquainted with many facts of the dockyard with which the officers of that establishment have no means of informing themselves.

There is one part of the paper I furnished which Lady Bentham considers unfair towards her late husband; it is as to the respective parts taken by him and by the late Sir Isambert Brunel in the contrivance of the block machinery. I never before heard or saw Sir Isambert's merit in this respect disputed: and on an occasion of his visiting Chatham dockyard, a few years ago, whilst I was there, he dined with me; and at that time the conversation turned, amongst other subjects, upon the block machinery,--and the tenor of his remarks was such as to lead any one not acquainted with the authorship of the machinery to suppose it was his own. The fact of his having received the entire pecuniary compensation was also presumptive evidence of his being the author of the contrivance.

Again, in my "History of Naval Architecture," I stated, after having collected information, as I believed, from the most reliable sources, that "amongst the improvements in the dockyards at the close of the last and the commencement of the present century, that which showed the most remarkable force of genius was the invention and employment of the block machinery at Portsmouth; this has always been regarded and admired as one of the most refined and useful applications of mechanical art in the service. The model for this machinery was made by Mr. (since Sir Isambert) Brunel, and, on its being brought under the notice of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, it was referred to General Bentham. He at once saw the merits of the invention, and, without hesitation, recommended it to the Government as a means by which blocks could be made with the greatest accuracy and uniformity, at the same time that the expense would be reduced in a very great degree. Upon this recommendation Mr. Brunel's machinery was ordered to be constructed; it was therefore taken in hand in 1802, and completed in 1808, and Mr. Brunel received, as a compensation for his invention, 20,000l., a sum which was then considered to be one year's saving, and an equivalent for his time and labour during the erection of the machinery."-pp. 128-9. The execution of the machinery was entrusted to Messrs. Maudslay, to whose ingenuity and ability much of the efficiency of the detail was understood to be due.

Shortly after the publication of that work I presented a copy of it to Lady Bentham; and in acknowledging that little mark of attention, her Ladyship stated that she turned at once to those parts of the book in which her late husband's labours had been noticed. But she never intimated that the merit of the contrivance in question belonged in any way to him.

The person who furnished to the "Encyclopædia Britannica" the article on the Block Machinery, wrote it under the impression that the design originated with Mr. Brunel. Thus, until the present time, all the evidence that had come to my knowledge was in favour of Mr. Brunel's authorship of the plan; and, indeed, Lady Bentham herself admits that he had a small working model, which was 66 exhibited to the Admiralty." But as to his having constructed this in

conformity to General Bentham's specification, nothing, so far as I am aware, had transpired until now.

I never entertained the shadow of a motive to do injustice to the claims of Sir Samuel Bentham. I believe he deserved far more of his country than was ever accorded to him; and that the greatest disadvantage he was under in getting due attention to many of his enlightened views, in regard to both mechanical appliances and the economy of carrying on public duties, consisted in his having appeared before the public mind was prepared to appreciate them,— when official prejudice was strong, and when questions regarding the public interest and national establishments were not matters of the same free discussion that they are at the present time. And I consider it is most honourable to Lady Bentham, at her advanced age, to enter so fully and ably as she does into the discussion of public questions, in vindication of the claims of her late husband, whose merits were never generally appreciated in his lifetime.

Only one other question discussed in Lady Bentham's paper remains to be noticed. She says: "In a statistical account of Portsea the metal mills in the dockyard should not be omitted." This branch of manufacture was removed from Portsmouth to Chatham dockyard several years ago, to make room for the erection of the steam factory. Its value, indeed, was such, that if it had remained the omission would not have been excusable; but its removal having taken place a considerable time before the paper in question was prepared, it seems that no further reason needs to be stated for omitting to notice it. I had, in my "History of Naval Architecture," mentioned the metal mills as a part of Sir Samuel Bentham's plan of dockyard improvements, and stated the annual saving of which it was the means, to have been about 41,000l., whilst Lady Bentham states the exact amount to have been 40,9547. 12s. 8d. But that which gave the greatest value to the metal mills was the superiority of the copper sheathing manufactured there, under the immediate charge of Mr. Vernon, who was brought into the service by General Bentham, an excellence which had not been realized before, nor has it been since his time.

Highland House, Landport,

28TH OCTOBER, 1853.

Contribution to the Natural History of the New Zealand Race of Men; being observations on their Stature, Weight, Size of Chest, and Physical Strength. By A. S. THOMSON, M.D., Surgeon, 58th Regt.

[Read before the Statistical Society, 16th January, 1854.]

IN submitting the following information on the physical development of the New Zealander, I trust that, although from the limited field of observation the conclusions are necessarily open to objection, the Society will regard them favourably, as being a contribution to an important branch of the natural history of this race, on which, so far as I am aware, no exact observations have yet been recorded.

Captain Cook observes, "The stature of the men in New Zealand is, in general, equal to the largest of those in Europe; they are stout, well-limbed, and fleshy;" and almost every succeeding writer has described them as a tall, strong, and well-proportioned race. Such statements, however, convey no definite information, nor do they furnish data by which to make a comparison with other races of men. With a view to supply this, I recorded the height of 147 men, above the age of puberty, who presented themselves at the military hospital in Auckland in April, 1849, for vaccination, the measurements being all taken without shoes or stockings. The results are shown in the following table:—

The average height of these 147 New Zealanders was 5 ft. 6 in. The average of 80 students of the University of Cambridge,* between 18 and 20 years of age, was 5 ft. 93 in., and that of upwards of 800 students in the University of Edinburgh,+ comprehending English, Scotch, and Irish, was 5 ft. 8,7 in., but from both of these an inch should be deducted for the shoes. The average height of 900 Belgians, taken by Quetelet from the government registers, was 5 ft. 4 in. Haller states the mean height of men in the temperate countries of Europe to be from 5 ft. 5 in, to 5 ft. 6 in.

From these statements it would appear that the New Zealanders are not so tall as the natives of Great Britain, but taller than the Belgians, or the men of the temperate countries of Europe. This is

* Quetelet's Treatise on Man. The materials were furnished to him by Professor Whewell.

† On the Results of Experiments made on the Weight, Height, and Strength of above 800 individuals. By James D. Forbes, Esq., F.R.S., L. and E., Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh.-Read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

more clearly shown as regards the natives of Belgium and New Zealand respectively in the following table, in which the proportion per cent. at different heights is stated:

It will be seen from this table that the proportion of New Zealanders of upwards of 5 ft. 6 in. is double that of the Belgians, while above 5 ft. 10 in. the proportion is as 11:6 to 2-4 respectively.

The following circumstances are stated by Villermé to influence the stature of man. "The human height becomes greater and the growth takes place more rapidly-cæteris paribus—in proportion as the country is richer, the comfort more general, houses, clothes, and nourishment better, and labour, fatigue, and privation, during infancy, less; or, in other words, the circumstances accompanying misery put off the period of the complete development of the body, and stunt human stature." These must, doubtless, exercise some influence on the growth, but their effect is much more marked on the muscular development and the rapidity of growth than upon the height, which seems rather to depend upon_race. Thus the New Zealanders have worse houses and clothing, and more uncertain, if not poorer nourishment, than the natives of Belgium, and yet they are taller.

At the same time that I registered the height of the New Zealanders I had them carefully weighed in a common lever balance, and the following are the results, deducting the weight of clothes and mats:

The average weight of these 146 men, without their clothes and mats, was 140 lbs., or ten stone. They were principally either Waikato natives or men employed on the government works, both of which classes are usually better fed than the natives generally.

The following statements, derived from various observations made