having made six business applications at long distances apart. It has been upon one occasion exactly the same as with the Indian business. If you remember, they said, "had he been a civil engineer we could have sent him out at once;" and I called on a chap here, a C.E., called Bantry, who asked me if I knew anything about surveying; I said I did, rejoicing inwardly at the vagueness of the question, but he soon stopped generalizing, and asked had I ever done any practical surveying--in fact, could I take charge of a survey-staff, to go out west or elsewhere. I said I felt certain I could do so, but to his direct question was obliged to admit that I had never had any experience. He seemed sorry; he wanted someone to take charge of a survey, but he said he could hardly employ me for that purpose, seeing I had had no practice. I think, had I possessed a theodolite, and all the other paraphanalia, I could have got him to take me on trial, but of course it was no use spending a lot of money on instruments that I might never want, just for the chance. This is the only time I have come near getting a job yet. It was riling to miss it, but I don't see how it could have been otherwise. What would you have done? I am rather at a loss to know what to do now. I seem to have pretty well dried up Montreal, and don't see much use sticking here for another week, and yet the man whom I have got to see at 9 a.m. to-morrow, may recommend me to half-a-dozen different places, and those again may give rise to another half-a-dozen. What's the use of writing it all down any way? I am sitting on a very low chair at a very high table, consequently my left arm feels as though it was restraining an apparent tendency on the part of the table to set at nought the established laws of gravity. How is the old Tadpole, the wily banker, the impecunious toiler among heaps of gold? Tell him to prig a few thousand pound notes, and wrap himself up in them all but his head, that will do for the port light, and labelled "wrong side up, with care," and get himself sent across here, then I shall have nothing to do but to chaw baccy, and wait till he comes out of jail. Have you seen my particular friend the "Dook" lately? How's he a-getting on? And what's he doing? And what does he want to do? which is just the difference between great expectations and little realities. By-the-bye, did you ever hear of a single ladder bucket dredger for a depth of thirty-five feet to dredge 1,200 tons an hour? The buckets are 1 cwt. 7st. capacity, and travel up at the rate of 125 feet per minute; the engines are vertical, and the connecting rods go slick on to the pinions, on which is the friction arrangement, instead of on the spur wheel. I got an introduction to some people in the Harbour Commisioners, and the above details are all I got out of them.