* *

"as

power to administer the affairs of the navy. It enjoins upon all
persons belonging to the navy to observe all such orders as "Our
said Commissioners, or any two or more of them, give,"
if Our High Admiral had given it." But the distribution of
responsibility contained in the patent has not been conformed to
in practice, and it is believed that the First Lord has a far greater
share of the labors of the Admiralty than he can properly attend
to. "According to the patent, all the members are equal, with
co-ordinate powers, and with joint responsibility. According to
usage, the responsibility rests almost entirely on the First Lord."
(Evidence of the Duke of Somerset before the select Committee
on the Board of Admiralty, 16 April, 1861.) As he nominates
the other members "at his pleasure," the First Lord is, practically,
supreme; for, if opposed by the members, he may break up the
Board. Besides the First Lord, who is a cabinet officer appointed
generally from civil life by the Prime Minister, there are three
naval members of the Board, and one other member, who is always
taken from among the members of the House of Commons.
addition to the Board proper, there are one naval and two civil
Secretaries. The Board meets every week-day at noon, except
Saturdays; and two Lords and a Secretary form a quorum for bus-
iness. Certain orders may be signed by the Secretary alone, and
are regarded as the order of the Board collectively: but an order
that authorizes the payment of money, requires the signatures of
two Lords. The Secretaries have jointly charge of the Secretariat,
and the First Secretary has important duties in Parliament, in con-
nection with the department.

In

In March, 1861, a select committee was appointed "to inquire into the Constitution of the Board of Admiralty, and the various duties devolving thereon;" also, "as to the general effect of such system on the navy." No material change took place, however, until the 14th January, 1869, when, at the instance of Mr. Hugh C. E. Childers, then First Lord, the Board was re-organized by Her Majesty in Council, as follows: First Lord of the Admiralty, First Naval Lord, Third Lord and Controller, Junior Naval Lord, and Civil Lord, with the Parliamentary Secretary, and the Permanent Secretary—the First Lord, being responsible to Her Majesty and to Parliament, for all the business of the Admiralty; the other members of the Board were to act as his assistants.

On the 19th March, 1872, the order of January, '69, was re

scinded, and the Board constituted as follows, and as it now stands:

(1) The First Lord of the Admiralty, First Naval Lord, Second Naval Lord, Junior Naval Lord, Civil Lord.

(2) The Parliamentary Secretary, Permanent Secretary, Naval Secretary.

(3) The office of Comptroller of the Navy was re-established as an office to be held for a fixed period by an officer, not a member of the Board, and to be assisted by a permanent officer to be called Deputy Comptroller and Director of Dockyards, whose duties are mainly concentrated on the management of the dockyards,

(4) The First Lord is responsible to Her Majesty and to Parliament for all the business of the Admiralty, the business to be transacted in three principal divisions:

(a) The First Naval Lord, the Second Naval Lord, and the Junior Naval Lord, to be responsible to the First Lord of the Admiralty for the administration of so much of the business relating to the personnel of the Navy and to the movement and condition of Her Majesty's Fleet, as shall be assigned to them, or each of them, from time to time by the First Lord.

(b) The Comptroller to be responsible to the First Lord for the administration of so much of the business as relates to the matériel of Her Majesty's Navy, the Comptroller to have the right to attend the Board, and to explain his views whenever the First Lord shall submit to the Board for their opinion, designs for ships or any other matters emanating from the Comptroller's Depart

ment.

(c) The Parliamentary Secretary to be responsible to the First Lord for the Finance of the Department, and for so much of the other business of the Admiralty as may be assigned to him.

(d) The Civil Lord, the Permanent Secretary, and the Naval Secretary, to have such duties as shall be assigned to them by the First Lord.

A number of other officers are by the same order established at the Admiralty, Whitehall, as:

Director of Naval Ordnance, Chief Naval Architect, Engineerin-Chief, Accountant General, Director General of Medical Department, Director of Transport Service, Chief of Hydrographic Division, Adjutant General of Marines, etc., etc., etc.

It may be here noted that, counting from 1801, when the Earl of St. Vincent was at the head of naval affairs, and including the Duke of Clarence, who was Lord High Admiral from May 2, 1827, to Aug. 12, 1828, and including, also, the present incumbent, the Hon. Mr. Hunt, the official life of a First Lord may be assumed to be about two years and seven months, while that of a Secretary of the Navy of the United States, for the same period, averages two years and nine months.

Now the theory on which this Board is founded has obtained from the earliest times as already explained, and is entirely consistent with sound principles. The First Lord has general control of the whole navy, in the name of his Sovereign, to whom he is responsible for its management. But he represents the civil power, and concerns himself more immediately with the civil affairs of the navy. It is for this reason that in the more liberal forms of government the First Lord or Minister of Marine is selected from civil life. Associated with this civil office, but subordinate to it, is the military branch of the establishment. This is presided over by the senior Sea Lord, and his coadjutors, the other Sea Lords and Naval Secretary. Here we have a division of labor of such obvious propriety as to need no argument for its support.

This distinction between the civil and military has never fully obtained in the organization of the navy department of the United States. With us, the Secretary of the Navy has generally endeavored to assume the duties of both civil and military branches, and, as a natural consequence, he has generally failed, as the gradual but certain decadence of the navy during the last half century fully attests. The relative positions of a Secretary of the Navy and a First Lord of the Admiralty, it may be observed, are analogous; they both derive their authority from sources precisely similar, viz. the Chief Magistrate. The Chief Magistrate of a State, be he Prince or President, is the constitutional or acknowledged military head. Thus James I. declared himself to be Lord High Admiral and Lord General, a claim that was subsequently confirmed to the reigning sovereign by Parliament. (13 Car. II. c. 6.) So in second section of Art. II. of the Constitution of the United States, the President is declared to be the commander-in-chief of the army and navy.

That the President might actually take command of troops in the field, was contemplated as a possibility by the framers of the

Constitution, and during the late war of the Rebellion he really did exercise the functions of commander-in-chief by changing the plan of a campaign which had been laid down with consummate military skill; but no such contingency was ever imagined for his Secretaries of State, either for War or for the Marine. In the name of their common chief, they have general control of the two arms of the public service, but it is solely in a civil capacity that they act. They have no military existence whatever. For this reason there should be associated with the Secretary of each of these departments a military executive, subordinate to the administrative or civil branch, but having certain duties connected with the service proper, so clearly defined as not to be subjected to the caprice of the ephemeral and ever-varying interests of party politics. The only question to be considered now is, whether this executive power should be vested in one or in several persons. In the army it has never been questioned that this power should lie with the commanding general. But in the navy, through some misapprehension, a plurality of executives has found much favor. The present navy department has nine separate and independent executives, a fact which goes far to account for the unsatisfactory state in which we find the navy to-day. To remedy this great evil, various boards, such as of admiralty, commissioners, etc., etc., have been proposed. An examination of the British Board of Admiralty, however, has shown that that body originated as a commission appointed for a specific purpose, and that now certain general duties are distributed among its members much in the same way that similar duties of our navy department are distributed among chiefs of bureaus. But we have no need of such a board with our bureau system, where the chiefs can be assembled at pleasure for consultation. We simply require a military executive, and experience and reason concur in pointing to a single person to hold the office. "That unity is conducive to energy will scarcely be disputed;" observes the Federalist, in discussing the form of the Executive branch of our government, "decision, activity, secrecy, and despatch will generally characterize the proceedings of one man in a much more eminent degree than the proceedings of a greater number; and in proportion as the number is increased, these qualities will be diminished." "Timidity, indecision, obstinacy, and pride of opinion," says Mr. Justice Story, in continuing Hamilton's forcible argument against an Executive Council, "must

mingle in all such councils, and infuse a torpor and sluggishness destructive of all military operations." These arguments apply

with irresistible force to the government of a navy. Summing up, then, we are led to the conclusion that a navy department should consist of a Secretary of the Navy, to administer the civil affairs of the navy-the Admiral of the Navy, or a naval officer of high rank, to act as his executive, or assistant, in the management of the affairs of the navy proper, and the bureaus as they now exist, but with the strangely anomalous clause of the law stricken out, which makes the orders of an inferior, a chief of bureau, equal to those of his superior, the Secretary of the Navy. (See Sec. 420, Revised Statutes.)

A naval government based on such sound principles as we have endeavored to elucidate, could not fail in the desideratum we set out with an energetic, efficient, and economical administration of naval affairs.

MR. DARWIN ON THE FERTILIZATION OF FLOWERS.

N 1862, Mr. Darwin's Fertilization of Orchids first appeared. Leading botanists knew that most of this tribe were unable to fertilize themselves, and some knew that insects were necessary agents in successful fertilization; but no one knew how varied and how beautiful were the arrangements by which fertilization was effected, and few knew that the pollen of one flower was brought to another as a regular thing by insect aid. To demonstrate these facts was Darwin's great work. He tells us that it grew out of his Origin of Species. He there gave general reasons for a belief that no "hermaphrodite fertilizes itself for a perpetuity of generations." Having been blamed, he says, for propounding this doctrine without giving ample facts, he issued this book "to show he had not spoken without having gone into details." Even with this work on the fertilization of orchids, he seems to have felt that something further was necessary to prove

1 CROSS AND SELF-FERTILIZATION IN THE Vegetable Kingdom. By Charles Darwin, New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1877.

ON THE FERTILIZATION OF ORCHIDS BY INSECTS. By Charles Darwin. 2d Edition. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1877.