1867.] Engineering — Civil and Mechanical. 403 



has yet been penetrated at both ends; the central shaft is to be 

 1,030 feet deep ; the tunnel itself is elliptical in section, 27 feet by 

 15 feet, and is now down 400 feet. 



The quay walls of the new Windmillcroft Dock on the Clyde 

 were completed early in March last ; this dock is 1,050 feet long 

 by 250 feet broad, and has an area of rather more than 5 acres. 

 The Norfolk Estuary Company have very recently completed another 

 embankment of two miles in length at North Wooton, by means of 

 which 700 acres has been added to that already reclaimed in the 

 Wash, and makes a total of about 4,000 acres of the 32,000 to be 

 recovered from the sea by that Company. We are informed that, 

 after extensive soundings, Mr. Hawkshaw has abandoned his project 

 for a submarine channel railway between England and France; 

 and from a contemporary journal we observe that it is intended to 

 make a subaqueous tubular bridge across the bed of the Mississippi 

 at St. Louis, at which point the river is about half-a-mile broad. 



A great deal of progress is just now being made in the con- 

 struction of telegraph lines, especially submarine. The Electric 

 Telegraph Company have laid a second wire to the Isle of Wight ; 

 and a fresh cable has been laid between Hull and New Holland. 

 In January last a submarine cable, 29 miles in length, was laid 

 between Ceylon and the main land, being the first yet constructed 

 on Mr. Hooper's principle, which principle has, we observe, obtained 

 a gold medal at the Paris Exhibition. A contract was, not long 

 since, signed with the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance 

 Company for a submarine cable between Placentia, Newfoundland, 

 and Sydney, Nova Scotia ; and Messrs. Silver and Co. have recently 

 manufactured a cable, 110 miles in length, for submergence between 

 Florida and Cuba. The works on the Kusso-American line have, it is 

 stated, now been abandoned. An iceberg recently grounded within 

 a mile-and-a-half of the Newfoundland coast and cut the new 

 (1866) Atlantic cable, so that the old cable had for some time all 

 the work to do by itself, but the fracture has now been success- 

 fully repaired. Before leaving the subject of telegraphy, we may 

 notice that the Government have in preparation a scheme for 

 acquiring a right over the whole of the telegraph lines throughout 

 the United Kingdom, and to work them in connection with the 

 Post Office. A bill for this purpose will be introduced as soon as 

 the Eeform Bill has been sent to the Upper House. 



The use of steel in locomotive construction is beginning to be 

 more thought of than heretofore. There have been now at work 

 for some years, on the Maryport and Carlisle Kailway, several 

 locomotives having steel boilers, fire-boxes, and tubes, as well as 

 steel tyres, piston rods, and motion bars ; and there have recently 

 been constructed for the Paris and Sceaux line, and for the Southern 

 Piailway of France, several engines with steel boilers. The use of 



