242 



ENGINEERING. 



with rapidity, but corrected with great care. 

 She was modest and unassuming in social life, 

 never spoke of herself, nor used any of the or- 

 dinary arts of popularity, and had compara- 

 tively few intimate friends. Like many other 

 authors, she oddly preferred her poems to her 

 novels. The later works of George Eliot were 

 extraordinarily successful in a pecuniary sense ; 

 while she received only $1,500 for "Scenes of 

 Clerical Life," u Middlemarch " gained her the 

 enormous sum of $40,000, and ''Daniel De- 

 ronda" nearly as much. 



ENGINEERING. The renewed impetus 

 which abundant crops and restored prosperity 

 have given to railroad extension in the United 

 States has called this branch of engineering 

 connected with railroad-building into unusual 

 activity. The progress of the art in some of 

 the most important departments is little no- 

 ticed except by the practically interested. 

 There have been 7,150 miles of new railroad 

 constructed in the United States during the 

 year 1880. This is the largest construction of 

 any one year except 1872, which exceeded it 

 by 190 miles. Of the total length built in 

 1880, 79'6 per cent., or 5,698 miles, was west 

 of the Mississippi River. The total length of 

 railroad in the United States amounts to 93,- 

 637 miles. The increase in the railroad mile- 

 age, taking the extension of the year 1880 as a 

 basis of calculation, is 8^ per cent, per an- 

 num, while the increase in population in the 

 United States is only about 2 per cent, an- 

 nually. In the construction of iron railroad- 

 bridges American engineers stand foremost 

 in the world, as might be expected when it 

 is known that the American network of rail- 

 roads is nearly as extensive as the combined 

 railroad systems of all Europe. There are 

 900 miles of bridge-structures in the Unit- 

 ed States, of which 300 miles are of iron or 

 stone. The details of two of the most re- 

 cently completed railroad-bridges, which are 

 typical iron long-span truss structures, illus- 

 trating the most improved practice of Ameri- 

 can bridge-builders, are given below. O. Cha- 

 nute, a Western engineer, has collected the 

 statistics of some of those fields of engineer- 

 ing whose achievements- are too familiar to be 

 esteemed at their true value. There are, ac- 

 cording to his computations, 3,257 miles of 

 canal in the United States. He also states that 

 569 towns and cities of the United States and 

 Canada are supplied with water- works, which 

 have 13,000 miles of water-pipes, 10,000 miles 

 of these being of cast-iron ; and improvements 

 have been wrought in the methods of water- 

 supply within a quarter of a century which 

 reduce the cost 50 per cent. The gas com- 

 panies of the country have increased in num- 

 ber from 50 in 1850 to about 900, representing 

 a capital of as much as $200,000,000. The 

 success of the Suez Canal and the project of 

 the interoceanic canal through the Isthmus of 

 Panama have directed attention to the Isthmus 

 of Cape Cod, through which a tide-level canal 



is being cut which promises to benefit coast 

 navigation to an extent incommensurately 

 greater than the cost in labor and capital out- 

 lay. This labor is undertaken by private cap- 

 italists; but from Government initiative still 

 greater works of a similar character are called 

 for in many quarters. The latest matured 

 project of this kind is for a ship-canal with 

 locks across the Florida Peninsula. More ur- 

 gent improvements are being carried out on 

 a liberal scale, notably the blasting away of 

 reefs to make a new entrance for deep-draught 

 vessels to New York Harbor from Long Isl- 

 and Sound, the commencement of which has 

 been fully described in the " Annual Cyclo- 

 paedia " for 1876. Very valuable service is 

 being done in the regulation of the change- 

 able currents of the rivers of the West, in 

 the study of which admirable skill has been 

 shown, and original methods evolved. En- 

 gineers are more and more convinced that no 

 scheme for river improvements is efficient 

 unless it embraces the entire course of the 

 river ; and that, if the regimen of the river 

 throughout its entire length is not taken as a 

 whole into consideration, any local improve- 

 ments, whether diking or the rectification or 

 deepening of channel - beds, may do more 

 harm than good. (The much-needed improve- 

 ments of the Sacramento River, just com- 

 menced, with the plans proposed for their 

 execution, are described in CALIFOENIA.) In 

 Great Britain several important harbor im- 

 provements have been completed in 180, 

 chief of which are the great Victoria Dock 

 extension in London, and the enlargement of 

 the Hartlepool Docks, by which a completely 

 landlocked harbor is secured for a port whose 

 situation is favorable for a commercial de- 

 velopment in other directions besides in the 

 timber-trade, which is now its main business. 

 The extension of ocean telegraphy proceeds 

 at an augmenting rate. Only fifteen years 

 after the two great commercial nations of kin- 

 dred race which face each other across the sin- 

 gle ocean of the land hemisphere were enabled 

 to send instantaneous signals over the first At- 

 lantic cable, each and every land nearly of all 

 the six continents, which has aught to con- 

 tribute or receive in the world's market, or 

 takes any active share in the busy interchange 

 of economic services, is joined by these vital 

 nerves of commerce, whose iron threads wend 

 over the hills and valleys of the ocean's bot- 

 tom. The first American cable is wisely in- 

 tended to link the United States to the sister 

 republics of the same continent, with which 

 intercourse and trade have been slighter and 

 less frequent than with the antipodes, while 

 other industrial nations have known how to 

 turn their peculiar and invaluable organic and 

 mineral products to a profitable account. 



The bridge across the Missouri River at 

 Plattsmouth, built to connect the Iowa and 

 Nebraska divisions of the Burlington and Mis- 

 souri Railroad, lately consolidated with the 



