ion of backwardness in the
adoption of remedial measures on English rivers. An instance, however,
of improvement since then has been the construction by Mr. Wiswall,
the engineer to the Bridgewater Navigation Company (on the Mersey and
Irwell section of that navigation), of the movable Throstle Nest weir
at Manchester. It does seem to me that by the adoption of movable
weirs, rivers in ordinary times may be dammed up to retain sufficient
water to admit of a paying navigation and water for the mills on their
banks; while in time of flood they shall allow channels as efficient
for relief as if every weir had been swept away.

But the great feature of late years in canal engineering is not the
preservation or improvement of the ordinary internal canal, but the
provision of canals, such as the completed Suez canal, the Panama
canal in course of construction, the contemplated Isthmus of Corinth
canal--all for saving circuitous journeys in passing from one sea to
another; or in the case nearer home of the Manchester ship canal, for
taking ocean steamers many miles inland.

But the old fight between the canal engineer and the railway engineer,
or, more properly speaking, between the engineer when he had his canal
"stop" on and the same individual when he has his railway "stop"--you
will see that I am borrowing a figure, either from Dombey & Son, where
Mr. Feeder, B.A., is shown to us with his Herodotus "stop" on, or,
as is more likely, I am thinking of the organs to be exhibited in the
Second division, "Music," of that exhibition of which I have the honor
to be chairman--I am afraid this is a long parenthesis breaking
the continuity of my observations, which related to the old rivalry
between canal and railway engineering. I was about to say that this
rivalry was revived, even in the case of the transporting of ocean
vessels from sea to sea, for we know that our distinguished member,
Mr. Eads, is proposing to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by
means of a ship railway across the Isthmus of Panama. He suggests that
the largest vessels should be raised out of the water, in the manner
commonly employed in floating docks, and should then be transferred
to a truck-like cradle on wheels, fitted with hydraulic bearing blocks
(this being, however, not a new proposition as applied to graving
docks), so as to obtain practical equality of support for the ship,
notwithstanding slight irregularities in the roadway, while he
propos