508 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
Red, Rio Grande, and other rivers, with those of streams having their origin high 
up on the Pacific water shed. 
Those interested in these matters, and others not immediately or practically 
interested, may find instruction and diversion in an examination of a map clearly 
defining the rivers of North America, and estimating the work necessary for 
uniting them to form a network of avenues for steam navigation extending over 
the whole country. It is a work for centuries, though, and not for years—we 
had almost said for eternity, and not for time. Yet we can hardly avoid feeling 
that this is a part of the America of the future. When the great railway lines ar€ 
all completed, and there are several of what are, by way of distinction, called 
‘*competing lines”? between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and between the far 
North and the far South, and when the railway kings of a half century or a 
century hence ‘‘ pool their issues’ to fleece the public, then that public, three 
times as numerous and as wealthy as.now, will begin to realize, if not before, that 
there must be some method of transportation of freight which will check the 
action of railway companies in imposing onerous tariffs. These modes of trans- 
portation will necessitate the employment of either water or air, and as the latter 
element does not promise richly in this particular, the development of rival 
methods will doubtless be confined to the water. 
The keenly-observant reader may see in all this speculation a satire upon 
river improvement, and when it is considered how the government temporizes in 
the matter of river improvement the person who indulges in a fancy so far 
extended beyond that which is at presenta subject for somuch discussion and so lit- 
tle action, may well be accused of attempting a satire. But we believe that the public 
mind will wake in the near future to the advisability of great improvements in our 
water ways, and that, as the years now far distant roll by, the increased wealth, 
population, and energy of America will bring about the perfection of the system 
for steam navigation which we have fairly outlined, and which now seems a mere 
figment of the imagination.— River Record. 
THE SUCCESSOR OF GENERAL MYER. 
As yet President Hayes has given no indication of his purpose with regard 
to the choice of a successor for General Myer as Chief of the Signal Service. It 
is stated, however, on apparently good authority, that the position is to be given 
to one of two or three regular army officers, who have never had any connection 
with the bureau, and who strive for the place as a pleasant and easy berth rather 
than as a post of great capacity for useful and eminent service. The President 
will make a great mistake if he allows the Signal Bureau to lose any part of its 
usefulness, and by putting it in charge of any one whom the newspapers have 
recently named for it he will do this very thing. He will make it a sort of brevet 
pension office. The right way to fill the vacancy would be to promote the best 
of the subordinates of the late General Myer, whoever may prove upon a thore 
