or fall by its own merits, and should be
fostered and developed until horses possess no competitive ability.

CANAL NECESSITIES.

The history of the experiments for means of propulsion on our canals shows
that no system has been developed by means of which the carrying power of
these great channels of communication can be made available by steam. If
this deplorable fact is to be overcome, it must be through the aid of the
inventor; we must have some instruments of propulsion not hitherto in use,
and some other means of application of the propelling power than those now
in practice, or steam can never be sufficiently utilized to supersede
horses on canals.

We see the New York and Albany tow-boats, with from twenty to forty loaded
canal boats, running at four miles per hour, and they have taken over sixty
boats in a single tow from New York to Albany. But an engine, with a
respectable part of their steam, can take but a _small fraction_ of their
boats, and at a largely reduced speed on the canal.

The doom of 1845, of 1858 to '62, and of 1871 to '72, hangs over steam like
a shroud; it is a mechanical doom. Steam should be mechanically elevated so
that it can utilize from a third to half of its power, and so that an
engine can develop an equivalent of thirty to fifty horses on the tow-path
to a train of boats, and so that it can take trains of ten to fifteen boats
on the two sixty-miles levels--where large hulls can be built and used
without necessity of passing locks--and somewhat smaller trains on the
other parts of the canal, averaging eight to ten boats per tug, or moving
from 70,000 to 80,000 bushels of corn, all as fast as they can be safely
handled, and then the day of horses is limited, and canals will need new
arrangements, new regulations and new customs.

Tugs on the canal have never exceeded a utility of eight to fifteen per
cent. of the inherent power of their steam. Hence, they have never had
towing power to develop the movement of trains of boats; but when they can
be made mechanically to utilize from thirty to fifty per cent., the train
movement becomes initiated with boats just as absolutely as with cars, and
the tow-boat system will be just as prominently and universally established
between Buffalo and Albany as it is between New York and Albany.

It is perfectly practical for steam, when it shall possess a respectable
mechanical adaptation to canal duty; that is, when it shall not be so
shameful