We have in this another example of the way in which a railway company has saved a canal system from extinction, while under the control of the London and North-Western the Shropshire Union Canal is still undoubtedly one of the best maintained of any in the country. There may be sections of it, especially in out-lying parts, where the traffic is comparatively small, but a considerable business is still done in the conveyance of sea-borne grain from the Mersey to the Chester district, or in that of tinplates, iron, and manufactured articles from the Black Country to the Mersey for shipment. For traffic such as this the canal already offers every reasonable facility. The Shropshire Union is also a large carrier of goods to and from the Potteries district, in conjunction with the Trent and Mersey. So little has the canal been "strangled," or even neglected, by the London and North-Western Railway Company that, in addition to maintaining its general efficiency, the expenditure incurred by that company of late years for the development of Ellesmere Port--the point where the Shropshire Union Canal enters the Manchester Ship Canal--amounts to several hundred thousand pounds, this money having been spent mainly in the interest of the traffic along the Shropshire Union Canal. Deep-water quay walls of considerable length have been built; warehouses for general merchandise, with an excellent system of hydraulic cranes, have been provided; a large grain depôt, fully equipped with grain elevators and other appliances, has been constructed at a cost of £80,000 to facilitate, more especially, the considerable grain transport by canal that is done between the River Mersey and the Chester district; and at the present time the dock area is being enlarged, chiefly for the purpose of accommodating deeper barges, drawing about 7 feet of water. Another fact I might mention in regard to the Shropshire Union Canal is in connection with mechanical haulage. Elaborate theories, worked out on paper, as to the difference in cost between rail transport and water transport, may be completely upset where the water transport is to be conducted, not on a river or on a canal crossing a perfectly level plain, but along a canal which is raised, by means of locks, several hundred feet on one side of a ridge, or of some elevated table-land, and must be brought down in the same way on the other side. So, again, the value of what might otherwise be a useful system of mechanical haulage may be completely marred owing to the existence of innumerable locks.