Now where, in cases such as these, "urgent delivery is impressed by buyers," and the utmost energy is probably being enforced on the workers, is it likely that even the heavy goods so made would be sent down to the port by the tediously slow process of canal boat, taking, perhaps, as many days as even a goods train would take hours? Alternatively, would the manufacturers run the risk of delaying urgent work by having the raw materials delivered by canal boat in order to effect a small saving on cost of transport? Certainty of delivery might again be seriously affected in the case of canal transport by delays arising either from scarcity of water during dry seasons, or from frost in winter. The entire stoppage of a canal system, from one or other of these causes, for weeks together, especially on high levels, is no unusual occurrence, and the inconvenience which would then result to traders who depended on the canals is self-evident. In Holland, where most of the goods traffic goes by the canals that spread as a perfect network throughout the whole country, and link up each town with every other town, the advent of a severe frost means that the whole body of traffic is suddenly thrown on the railways, which then have more to get through than they can manage. Here the problem arises: If waterways take traffic from the railways during the greater part of the year, should the railways still be expected to keep on hand sufficient rolling stock, etc., not only for their normal conditions, but to meet all the demands made upon them during such periods as their competitors cannot operate? There is an idea in some quarters that stoppage from frost need not be feared in this country because, under an improved system of waterways, measures would be taken to keep the ice on the canals constantly broken up. But even with this arrangement there comes a time, during a prolonged frost, when the quantity of broken ice in the canal is so great that navigation is stopped unless the ice itself is removed from the water. Frost must, therefore, still be reckoned with as a serious factor among the possibilities of delay in canal transport.