The Little Roadstead, being thenceforward protected, will become an
excellent port of refuge in bad weather. In addition, a system of
lighters, or, better, a few floats connected with the shore and forming a
rock, will permit vessels to take on their cargoes with great rapidity.

Mr. Froideville's project presents the further advantage of rendering it
easier to put the port of Havre quickly in defense. A certain number of
floating batteries, anchored behind the breakwaters and protecting the
advances of torpedo boats by means of their firing, would make a
formidable defense. Not having to perform any evolutions, they might
without danger be invested with armor plate thicker than that of ordinary
ironclads. In order to complete the system, there might be erected upon
the Eclat shoal an ironclad fort like that which defends the entrance of
Portsmouth.

An English chronicler of the fourteenth century, in speaking of his
country, places it above all others, and declares that men are handsomer,
whiter, and purer blooded there than elsewhere, and he says that this is
so "because it is so." We would not like to imitate his naive reasoning,
and yet, for defending the very original system proposed by Mr.
Froideville, we have only our conviction, which we share, moreover, with a
large number of sea-faring men and engineers. Mathematics are powerless to
predict to us with accuracy the manner in which the floating breakwaters
will behave, but experiment remains. Let the promoter of the project,
then, be given authority to inclose a few hundred meters, and if, as we
suppose, the breakwaters shall remain immovable in a northwester, a
maritime revolution will have been brought about.--_La Nature._

* * * * *

IMPROVED CATCH BASIN.

In 1882, M. Bacle published in _Le Genie Civil_ a study of the sewer
systems in some of the large foreign cities. There may be found there a
description of the Liernur system at Amsterdam, Leyden, and Dordrecht, in
Holland, and in certain cities of Germany and the United States.

[Illustration: IMPROVED CATCH BASIN.]

This system consists in the employment of two distinct systems of ducts,
one for the discharges from water-closets and the other for household
wastes, rain water, and the discharges from factories when sufficiently
purified. This arrangement allows the employment of sewers of small
section, provided that it shall be unnecessary to enter them for t