255 



Sapperton Tunnel on the Thames and Severn Canal. 



Paper read at a Meeting of the Cotteswold Club, on the ISth May, 

 1870, at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, by John H. 

 Taunton, Mem. Inst. C. E. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen, 



In connexion with tlie localities whicli we have been visiting 

 to-day, it may be thought a legitimate variation of our usual 

 investigations, if we turn for the occasion from the oft discussed 

 pit dwellings and superficial burrows of our pre-historic ances- 

 tors to the more extensive burrows executed within historic 

 times— during later periods— and by our immediate forefathers. 

 For although the object and intention of such more recent 

 excavations is not problematic, and they possess therefore less 

 charm for the exercise of the imagination, yet they are alike 

 interesting as records of efforts to meet the supply of social 

 wants, and as steps in the large history of civilization. 



The general introduction of the Canal system in this country 

 dates but about a century ago, for the first boat-load of coals 

 sailed over the Barton Aqueduct of the Duke of Bridgewater's 

 Canal to Manchester, in July, 1761 ; and the Duke of Bridge- 

 water's Canal of James Brindlet was the pioneer to Canals in 

 this Country, just as the Stockton and Darlington Railway of 

 George Stephenson has been the pioneer to Railways : yet as 

 Tramways preceded Railways, so the knowledge of Canals was 

 well understood, but had not been applied until Brindley's time. 

 The great navigation works in Egypt, supposed to have 

 formed a communication between the Red and Mediterranean 

 Seas, and to have been maintained for about 600 years before, 

 and 800 years after the Christian Era, had existed, and were 

 well known to our ancestors. The Boeotian Canal, said to have 

 drained the Lake Moeris by several Channels carried in tunnels 

 through high mountain Barriers. 



The celebrated. Canals of China— The Conduits of Imperial 

 Rome, and those of Jerusalem, (which are now being carefuUy 

 T 



