§ ADMIRAL WALCOTTI have to ask the Secretary of the Admiralty whether he 545 has any objection to lay upon the table of the House the Correspondence which might have arisen between Captain Cowper Coles, of the Royal Navy, and the Board of Admiralty, on the subject of his Shot-proof Shield; the Report thereupon of the late Admiral Lord Lyons, in the year 1855; and the Report of Captain Powell, of Her Majesty's ship, Trusty, in the year 1861.
§ LORD CLARENCE PAGETsaid, he would be glad to give every possible information to his hon. and gallant Friend; but the fact was that the correspondence to which he referred took place in the year 1855, during the Russian war, and there was a great deal mixed up in it which it would not be advisable to make public. The cupola which was about to be built on Captain Coles plan was provisionally proposed to the Admiralty in the year 1855, and there was no essential difference in the proposal recently adopted as compared with that made in 1855. Some improvement, however, had been introduced.