694 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



kitten was exhibited, there was great applause, and the inventor warmly congrat- 

 ulated on his success. The Reading Eagle, from which we condense this account 

 of the remarkable invention, represents the opinions entertained of its practical 

 value as very high — it being possible for a signal officer on a railroad to see 

 hundreds of miles of track at the same instant. What next? — Kansas City 

 Journal. 



SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY. 



CANAL ACROSS CENTRAL AMERICA TO THE PACIFIC. 



BY E. H. DERBY. 



The success of the Suez Canal insures the construction of another ship canal, 

 most important to the United States — one which will form a new route for its 

 coastwise commerce, which now passes around Cape Horn to the Pacific. It will 

 reduce a voyage of 18,000 miles to one less than one-third of that distance, and 

 diminish the time required on the way to one-fifth of the time now taken, re- 

 placing the vessel under sail with the steamship of steel. The Pacific railways 

 are adapted to transportation of mails, travelers, and express freight. They are 

 important also for local traffic, but in no respect suited to our chief coasting 

 trade — the conveyance of grain, provisions, timber, coal, fish, and metals between 

 the Atlantic and Pacific. When a ship canal is finished, it will cheapen all our 

 routes to the Pacific, and it is safe to predict that it will reduce the rates of freight 

 between the Atlantic and the Pacific below six dollars per ton, via the canal, and 

 we may easily foresee what will be the future course of commerce. The routes 

 across the Isthmus and Central America have been explored and surveyed by both 

 England and the United States, and the estimates for one of them are below the 

 cost of the Suez Canal, while the prospects of business are far more encouraging. 

 The Suez Canal commands the trade between India and Europe, but cannot con- 

 trol the commerce of China and Japan with the United States, or more than half 

 of that between the same countries and Europe, while a ship-canal between the 

 Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific will eventually command twice the tonnage that 

 now passes through the Suez Canal. 



It will be a candidate for the vast export of wheat and other grain from our 

 Pacific coast to Europe. The annual production of wheat on our Pacific coast 

 exceeds a million tons, and will soon require a million of tons of shipping to con- 

 vey it to Europe. The ships would pass twice through the canal, and give it two 

 millions of tonnage. The vast coasting trade of the United States between the 

 Atlantic front and California, Oregon and Alaska would pass through this canal 

 both going and returning, and the varied products of the Pacific coast, in the shape 

 of timber, fish, copper ore, and extent of cargoes would, together, add another 



