gance--a combination of every requisite for
the safe and advantageous prosecution of passenger-traffic on streams
and estuaries. About the same period, the Glasgow engineers succeeded
in applying somewhat similar principles to the construction of
sea-going vessels of large tonnage, and, in spite of deeply-rooted
prejudices, have ultimately demonstrated the immense superiority of
such constructions over the old wooden vessels. If proof of this were
wanting, the removal of the costly, cumbersome steamers formerly
engaged in the carrying-traffic between Glasgow and Liverpool, and the
substitution in their room of light, capacious iron vessels, equally
strong, and manageable with greater ease and at a considerable saving
of expense--as, likewise the successful establishment of steam
communication between the former city and New York, deemed
impracticable under the old system--might serve to remove the doubts
of the most incredulous.

Although an infant in years, this new branch of engineering skill has
already attained gigantic proportions and mature development. Its
triumphs are on every sea, and on many waters never before traversed
by the agency of steam. The vessels already afloat are numerically a
trifle compared with those in contemplation; and perhaps the most
astonishing feature of all, is the almost infinite number of new
channels of trade they have opened, and are opening up. Ten years ago,
one-half the vessels plying on the Clyde were built of timber, and all
the larger ones, with a few solitary exceptions: at the present hour,
one could not count ten in a fleet of sixty--the immense majority are
of iron. The advertising columns of _one_ newspaper gave notice
recently, in a single day, of the establishment of _three_ several
routes of communication with foreign ports hitherto denied the means
of direct intercourse with this country, all to be carried on by means
of iron vessels. A sailing-vessel, constructed of this material, was
announced at Lloyd's a few months ago, as having performed one of the
speediest homeward passages from Eastern India yet recorded.

A rough estimate of the extent to which this branch of industrial
skill is carried, may be formed from the number of separate
establishments in active operation on the Clyde. There are five of
these in the neighbourhood of Govan, about two miles below Glasgow
Bridge; two at Renfrew; three at Dumbarton, which is, more correctly
speaking, on the Leven, but g