When Mr. Bird learned that work at this point was suspended, he became jubilant. He has filled ten pages of his two pamphlets with "porridge," and excited some fears on the part of his friends that the stuff has found access to the thinking part of his own person, and "muddled" it badly. But of this the reader may judge by noting on page 34 of the last pamphlet an assertion that the distance from the West portal to the shaft is all demoralized rock; and on pages 36 and 37 a calculation that it will cost $5,430,300 _in gold_, to construct this section of 2000 feet! But "porridge" is unreliable, and that at the Hoosac, has given out; and so Mr. Bird's hopes and calculations, which were based upon it, fall to the ground. Work has been recently resumed, and twenty-seven feet beyond the point at which it was discontinued, solid rock was reached, in which the workmen are now drilling and blasting without molestation or fear of "porridge." The brook is passed, and in the artesian well about half way from the portal to the shaft, solid rock has been reached at 130 feet above grade. "Porridge" has served its friends a mean trick and "well might _Mr. Bird_ exclaim in the language of Woolsey (slightly altered,)" "Had I but served _the truth_ with half the zeal I served my _porridge_, _it_ would not, in my need, Have left me naked to mine enemies." The theoretical capacity of the Western Railroad is a fruitful subject for speculations and array of figures, but facts and demonstrated truths are what practical men wish to deal with. A comparison of the Tunnel and Western lines is of no significance, when both are urgently needed. In 1847, when the Western Road was opened to Albany, it transported from Albany to Boston 88,438 tons of freight, and last year, only 87,254 tons, 1184 tons less. Yet in 1847 it had no double track, and in 1865 it had 116 miles of double track. The greatest tonnage was 116,288, in 1864: and that same year, 588,207 tons of through Eastward freight arrived at Albany and Troy, and the total amount to those two points was 3,866,025; nearly three fourths of which was transported on the Erie canal, an institution which is entirely left out of Mr. Bird's calculations. More than six million tons of freight were brought from the West last year to the Hudson river. Of this vast amount only a little more than one sixtieth found its way to Boston over the Western Road. In 1864, 471,919 tons of freight were transported from Albany and Troy to Boston by the circuitous routes we have mentioned.