generally illustrative of some of the lingual
or local peculiarities of sea-life, or borne on its literature, and
therefore are necessarily admitted as having a footing in maritime
philology. Some of our misused words and archaic phrases are, by
influence of the newspaper magnates, brought across the Atlantic, and
re-appear among us under the style and title of Americanisms: after
which fashion, in the lapse of time and the mutation of dialect,
vocables once differing in origin and meaning may become identical in
sense and sound.[A]

[A] As for example the word _alarm_, _alarum_, a bell, from the German
_laerm_; but the military _alarm_ on a drum is the Italian _all'arme_.

Finally, Natural History, a taste for which is a substantial blessing to
the sailor, is too vast a department for our professional pages.
However, a few requisite definitions of the familiar products of the
air, earth, and water are introduced. Numbers of marine birds and many
fishes--so often misnamed--are entered upon the muster; and especially
those which the blue-jackets vote to be very good eating; yet, as a
reverend author has well observed, we should, in such cases, recur to
the probable state of their appetites at the time of experiment. The
most general nautic dishes and refections are likewise cited, to the
making of which most of our sea-cooks are competent--there being no
puree, entremet, or fricandeau to trouble them. But though they are at
times libelled as being sent from the infernal regions, they are pretty
fair in their way; and though no great shakes in domestic chemistry,
they can enter the lists against any white-aproned _artiste_ at
pea-soup, beef-steak, lobscouse, pillau, curried shark, twice-laid, or
savoury sea-pie. Still, a more luxurious tendency in this department is
casting its shadow before; and there are Sybarites invading the ocean to
whom the taste of junk is all but unknown.

[Illustration: Signature of W. H. Smyth]

A DIGEST

OF

SEA TERMS AND PHRASES.

A.

A. The highest class of the excellence of merchant ships on Lloyd's
books, subdivided into A 1 and A 2, after which they descend by the
vowels: A 1 being the very best of the first class. Formerly a
river-built (Thames) ship took the first rate for 12 years, a Bristol
one for 11, and those of the northern ports 10. Some of the out-port
built ships keep their rating 6 to 8 years, and inferior ones only 4.
But improvements in ship-building