times a new development in the trade of some canals, born of a realization that for certain classes of goods water-transport is cheaper than the swifter rail-transport. Various proposals have been made for the establishment of a single control over all inland waterways. The lower or estuarine courses of some of the English rivers as the Thames, Tyne, Humber, Mersey and Bristol Avon, are among the most important waterways in the world, as giving access for seaborne traffic to great ports. From the Mersey the Manchester Ship Canal runs to Manchester. The manufacturing districts of South Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire are traversed and connected by several canals following transverse valleys of the Pennine Chain. The main line of the Aire and Calder navigation runs from Goole by Castleford to Leeds, whence the Leeds and Liverpool canal, running by Burnley and Blackburn, completes the connexion between the Humber and the Mersey. Other canals are numerous, among which may be mentioned the Sheffield and South Yorkshire, connecting Sheffield with the Trent. The Trent itself affords an extensive navigation, from which, at Derwent mouth, the Trent and Mersey Canal runs near Burton and Stafford, and through the Potteries, to the Bridgewater Canal and so to the Mersey. This canal is owned by the North Staffordshire railway company. The river Weaver, a tributary of the Mersey, affords a waterway of importance to the salt-producing towns of Cheshire. The system of the Shropshire Union railways and canal company, which is connected by lease with the London & North-Western railway company, carries considerable traffic, especially in the neighbourhood of Ellesmere Port. In the Black Country and neighbourhood the numerous ramifications of the Birmingham Canal navigations bear a large mineral traffic. This system is connected with the rivers Severn and Trent and the canal system of the country at large, and is controlled by the London & North-Western company. The principal line of navigation from the Thames northward to the midlands is that of the Grand Junction, which runs from Brentford, is connected through London with the port of London by the Regent's Canal, and follows closely the main line of the North-Western railway. It connects with the Oxford Canal at Braunston in Northamptonshire, and through this with canals to Birmingham and the midlands, and continues to Leicester. Both the Severn up to Stourport and the Thames up to Oxford have a fair traffic, but the Thames and Severn Canal is not much used. There is some traffic on the navigable drainage cuts and rivers of the Fens, but beyond these, in a broad consideration of the waterways of England from the point of view of their commercial importance, it is unnecessary to go.