for there is one in course of construction to connect the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. This will This will carry ships up to 2000 tons, will be 12 miles long, and will save 300 miles round Nova Scotia. The ships will be supported in cradles running on two lines of rails 18 feet apart, and will be drawn across by locomotives. Hydraulic lifts at the ends will raise and lower the vessels.

Although roads and canals have had such an influence in the present century, yet the railway industry probably more than any other has enhanced the wealth and fostered the commerce of the world, and has tended to promote international friendship and universal goodwill. At the last International Railway Congress Mr. Bryce summed up the present condition of affairs by saying that in this country they had nearly completed the work of constructing their great trunk lines. The capital invested in English railways was £1,000,000,000-one-sixth of the total of the world. They carried 900,000,000 passengers annually, and 325,000,000 tons of goods. The number of employés was 400,000. The mileage was 21,000, and the total mileage in her Majesty's dominions was 70,000, as against 400,000 throughout the world, one-half of which was in the United States.* In England there was a highly organised service of trains, and some wonderful engineering works. The speed and safety of English railways were unexcelled, and the safety of the workpeople was not neglected. The railway system had changed the condition, the politics, and the trade of the peoples of the world.

At the commencement of the present century railways were of course practically unknown; they are an outcome of the last seventy years as far as their present state is concerned. Wooden and even iron rails were used at an early date to facilitate the traffic of trucks in colliery districts, but the first Act for the construction of a railway was not passed until 1801. This line was from Wandsworth to Croydon, some nine miles, costing £60,000. Before 1823 there were thirty-three Acts for the construction of lines or for the extension of existing Acts and powers; but in that year the Stockton-Darlington line was passed, and all the genius of George Stephenson, the father of railways, was put forth to introduce locomotive traction instead of horse haulage. Then three years later the Manchester and Liverpool Act was passed, and from that date railway construction has steadily progressed. Not only was England busy with the extension of her lines, but all the other civilised countries of the world were at work in the same direction. The United

A detailed account of the length of railways in the chief countries of the world will be found in the essay on Locomotion.