SCIENCE IN RELATION TO THE ARTS. 217 



The time allowed me for addressing you on this occasion is wholly- 

 insufficient to do justice to the great engineering works of the present 

 day, and I must therefore limit myself to making a short allusion to a 

 few only of the more remarkable enterprises. 



The great success, both technically and commercially, of the Suez 

 Canal, has stimulated M. de Lesseps to undertake a similar work of 

 even more gigantic proportions, namely, the piercing of the Isthmus 

 of Panama by a ship-canal, forty miles long, fifty yards wide on the 

 surface, and twenty yards at tbe bottom, upon a dead level from sea 

 to sea. The estimated cost of this work is 20,000,000, and, more than 

 tbis sum having been subscribed, it appears unlikely that political or 

 climatic difficulties will stop M. de Lesseps in its speedy accomplish- 

 ment. Through it, China, Japan, and the whole of the Pacific Ocean 

 will be brought to half their present distance, as measured by the 

 length of voyage, and an impulse to navigation and to progress will 

 thus be given which it will be difficult to overestimate. 



Side by side with tbis gigantic work, Captain Eads, the successful 

 improver of the Mississippi navigation, intends to erect his ship rail- 

 way, to take the largest vessels, fully laden and equipped, from sea to 

 sea, over a gigantic railway across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a dis- 

 tance of ninety-five miles. Mr. Barnaby, the chief constructor of the 

 navy, and Mr. John Fowler have expressed a favorable opinion re- 

 garding this enterprise, and it is to be hoped that both the canal 

 and the ship-railway will be accomplished, as it may be safely antici- 

 pated that the traffic will be amply sufficient to support both these un- 

 dertaking's. 



Whether or not M. de Lesseps will be successful also in carrying 

 into effect the third great enterprise with wbicb his name has been 

 prominently connected, the flooding of the Tunis-Algerian Chotts, 

 thereby re-establishing the Lake Tritonis of the ancients, with its 

 verdure-clad shores, is a question which could only be decided upon 

 the evidence of accurate surveys, but the beneficial influence of a 

 large sheet of water within the African desert could hardly be matter 

 of doubt. 



It is with a feeling not unmixed with regret that I have to record 

 the completion of a new Eddystone Light-house in substitution for the 

 chef-d'oeuvre of engineering erected by John Smeaton more than one 

 hundred years ago. The condemnation of that structure was not, 

 however, the consequence of any fault of construction, but was caused 

 by inroads of the sea upon the rock supporting it. The new light- 

 house, designed and executed by Mr. (now Sir James) Douglass, engi- 

 neer of Trinity House, has been erected in the incredibly short time 

 of less than two years, and bids fair to be worthy of its famed prede- 

 cessor. Its height above high water is one hundred and thirty feet, as 

 compared with seventy-two feet, the height of Telford's structure, 

 which gives its powerful light a considerably increased range. The 



