66 Montreal. 



is well worth seeing, to which admission can be had on pay- 

 ment of 25 cents. The birds here are very well arranged 

 and present a very good collection of Canadian species ; 

 and the "Ferrier Collection" of Egyptian antiquities is as 

 perfect as perhaps any on this continent. The whole insti- 

 tution reflects great credit on the Society and the Curator. 



But the lion par excellence of Montreal, the eighth wonder 

 of the world, is the Victoria Bridge, the link in the Grand 

 Trunk Railway, connecting (for railway purposes only) the 

 City of Montreal, on the island, with the mainland to the 

 south, giving Montreal an unbroken railway communication 

 of 1 100 miles in length, besides connections. It is of iron, 

 on the tubular principle, and is the most remarkable stmicture 

 of the kind in the world. The bridge has two long abut- 

 ments and twenty-four piers of solid stone masonry. In 

 the whole history of engineering, no other so truly gigantic 

 an undertaking is met with. It is the creation of the same 

 genius that spanned the Menai Straits ; Mr, Robert Stephen- 

 son and Mr. A. M. Ross being the engineers of this great 

 work. Each buttress is calculated to withstand the pressure 

 of seventy thousand tons of ice when the winter breaks up 

 and the large ice-fields come sweeping down the St. Law- 

 rence ; and the western faces of the piers, that is, those 

 towards the current, which flows through them at a rate 

 varying from seven to ten miles an hour, terminate in a 

 sharp pointed edge, and the fore part of each presents two 

 beautifully smooth beveled-off surfaces. They are so shaped 

 in order to offer the least possible resistance to the ice. 

 The stone used in the construction of the piers and abut- 

 ments is a dense blue limestone, partly obtained from a 

 quarry at Pointe Claire, eighteen miles above Montreal, and 

 partly from a quarry on the borders of Vermont, about forty 

 miles distant. The blocks of stone are bound together not 

 only with the best water cement, but each stone is clamped 

 to its neighbor in several places by massive iron rivets, 



