presence of a numerous company. That the river is already much purer, is quite apparent. It has been officially reported by the Metropolitan Board of Works, that roach and dace. have been taken in the Thames, off the Houses of Parliament; and that, though the whole system is far from being complete, it is very gratifying to be able to state that the Registrar-General's reports show that the mortality of the metropolis has been reduced to a trifle over the average mortality of the United Kingdom, from having been rather considerably above it.

The great scheme of Messrs Napier and Hope for the conveyance and application of the sewage of the north of the Thames to land forty miles off, having been ratified by Act of Parliament, is now being proceeded with, and the shares of the joint-company are at a handsome premium. If the enterprise, as I sincerely trust it will, prove successful, it will give a powerful impetus to a similar application of the sewage in other towns and populous places.

The plans proposed by Mr Thomas Ellis for dealing with large quantities of sewage will probably soon be applied to the Southern Metropolitan Sewage, of which the Board is likely to make to him a concession.

These plans differ from those of Messrs Napier and Hope, by their involving the distribution of small quantities of sewage over large areas, while Messrs Napier and Hope's are for the distribution of large quantities over small areas.

Another colossal work now going on on the Thames is the embankment. Thanks to the improved mechanical appliances and organisation of labour, it is now far advanced. An extended area will be reclaimed from the river, from what were formerly deposits of mud, most injurious to the public health. This will supply a roadway eighty feet in width, with side pavements of ten feet each, to be continued by a new street to the Mansion-House. The Low Level North Main Sewer is enclosed in this embankment, an arrangement which, besides obviating the inconvenience of blocking up some of the busiest thoroughfares for months together, promotes a most important economy. The scheme also includes a subterranean railway, a sub-way for gas and water pipes, and

other appliances. Added to all this, although it is expected. that the Pool, a reach of the Thames between the London Docks and Limehouse, will be shoaled, the scour of the river, relieved of its vitiating elements, will be greatly improved above London Bridge, and something will be done towards beautifying the British capital, and affording a pleasant place of public resort. As in the Main Drainage Works, the materials and works of the embankment are of the most perfect kind, and the figures which represent them deeply impress the mind with the vast extent of the undertaking. I should like to have had time to impart the information. with which I have been favoured as to the new mode of constructing the cofferdams, by elliptical iron caissons, and to the hydraulic appliances adopted by the two enterprising contractors, Mr Furness and Mr Ritson. Among other effective machinery which has been employed upon these works may be mentioned Murray's chain-pumps;—a hoist which works at a cost of five shillings a-day; and a machine devised by Mr Furness, and which produces 35,000 bricks a day, pugging the clay, and in fact doing all the work except digging it. The river wall is being faced with fine granite, which I believe is quarried in the county of Kirkcudbright, and transported by rail in blocks ready for use.

From the extraordinary success which has attended the Underground Railway in London, arrangements and works are in progress for considerably extending that means of communication. The enormous traffic of the great thoroughfares of the metropolis has so increased as to bring the means of locomotion almost to a dead-lock. It is greatly to be regretted that the views held on the subject of metropolitan railway communication by Mr Fowler, the engineer of the Underground Railway, were not received at a much earlier period, as in that case London would have been spared great inconvenience and some disfigurement.

During the last Session of Parliament no fewer than 22 bills for metropolitan schemes obtained the royal assent, and it is known that there is another large crop of them getting ready for the ensuing session. Meantime works of

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astounding magnitude, complexity, and cost are in progress in every quarter of London, in illustration of which I will now state one or two facts, which will probably be interesting. One of the most important of these works is the Great Eastern Railway, which terminates at Liverpool Street, Finsbury. A novel feature to be observed here is, that for the length of very nearly one mile this and another railway occupy the same site or solum; that is, the Great Eastern Railway is carried exactly over the East London Railway. The two lines part company at a point near the Jews' Cemetery, Whitechapel Road, after which, the latter is carried under the London Docks, and under the Thames, through the famous Thames Tunnel, finally joining the Brighton and South Coast System, near New Cross. By this line direct railway communication is established between the great railway systems on opposite sides of the river.

Another railway, the North London, has just been brought into Liverpool Street, which will become one of the largest, if not the largest, of all the London termini; the several companies interested at this point, having jointly made applications to Parliament for an enormous block of land on the west side of Bishopsgate Street, extending as far as Long Alley. Another great undertaking is the extension of the North-Western Railway to Charing Cross, there to connect it with the South-Eastern system. This line will mostly. be under ground from its commencing-point near Mornington Crescent, and will involve works of no small engineering difficulty and novelty, one of which deserves particular mention. The point I refer to is at the intersection of the Tottenham Court Road and the Euston Road. Already the Underground Railway runs beneath this, crossing east and west under the Euston Road. Between the crown of the tunnel of the railway and the roadway above there is a space of about 8 feet, yet that is traversed at right angles by the tube of the Pneumatic Despatch Railway, which was last week formally opened for. traffic. The North-Western Extension Railway to Charing Cross is to underlie the Metropolitan Railway and the Pneumatic Tube, parallel to the latter, thus presenting the bold and

startling novelty of one subterranean railway under another. At the same point there are the drains of the Metropolitan Board, one on either side of the Underground Railway, and to this extraordinary combination of works must be added the conduits for the surface-water into the drains, the gas and water pipes, and the wires of the telegraph companies. Here we might almost say that engineering and enterprise were running mad together, if we did not know that these preparations, gigantic as they are, are not in excess of the requirements and activity of the capital.

Among other railway schemes I may mention the Metropolitan District Railway, which is being placed in the Thames Embankment, north side. This line is an extension of the metropolitan, and makes an entire circuit of the metropolis, from the Paddington to the Farringdon Street end of the latter. On the south side of the Thames the railway works are also very large and costly, and at some points there are other works of stupendous magnitude, a notice of which would be interesting if time admitted. In connection with these works questions have constantly arisen, affecting the condition of the working classes who are displaced by them. Their lot is, indeed, a hard one; but, to the credit of the railway companies, they have done their best to make them reparation. On several metropolitan lines, which have thus displaced poor occupants, the working-classes are conveyed in and out of town for sixpence a-week; and they are now enabled to live in more healthy spots, while in many places their condition has been improved by the erection of model lodging-houses in pleasant suburbs of the metropolis, and in immediate connection with these railway arrangements. How far these plans meet the difficulty, will soon be better known, but I think it is admitted that they constitute a valuable mitigation, and are well worthy of favourable consideration in all populous localities.

The development of the railway system in the metropolis, vast as I have described it to be, is by no means in excess of the public necessities, of which you may judge, when I state that the number of deaths caused by the over

crowded street traffic of London amounts to about 400 per annum, and the casualties to about 2000.

To the brief notice I just now gave of the works on the Thames, I might have added some account of the new railway bridges at Hungerford and Blackfriars and Bankside, the new public bridge at Blackfriars, and the temporary wooden structure at the latter point, each of them a colossal structure of its kind.

The annals of art probably record no idea fraught with more valuable consequences than that which is the basis of Mr Henry Bessemer's process for the conversion of the better kinds of pig-iron into cast-steel. It is somewhat curious, that whereas steel has commonly been manufactured in this country by the addition of a small quantity of carbon to malleable iron, the Bessemer method, proceeding in the opposite direction, is analogous in principle to that which prevails in Central Europe. Every successive year produces some new proof of the superior advantage which attends the application of this metal in the arts. It is now largely used in heavy forgings, in the manufacture of heavy projectiles of all descriptions, and for ordnance, axles, shafts, cranks, rails, and other purposes.

Experiments made at the Victoria Terminus, London, appear to show conclusively that, while rails of the ordinary description require twelve renewals, the Bessemer rails hardly show any wear at all; and that there is economy in using them, though they cost from L.18 to L.20, as against from L.6 to L.7 for the ordinary ones, per ton. This steel is, in fact, fast becoming a substitute for iron for this purpose, as is proved by the increasing quantities in which it is being produced. There are now in Great Britain seventeen large Bessemer steel works producing steel at L.20 a ton below the average price at which it was sold before the process was invented; and in these establishments there are erected, or in course of erection, no fewer than sixty converting vessels, capable of producing from 3 to 10 tons of steel at a single charge. In regular operation these vessels can produce weekly 6000 :tons of steel, which is equal to fifteen times the entire production of the metal before the introduction of the process.