The local trade in its path would alone justify its construction. It will penetrate the finest mineral lands of Virginia and West Virginia, which have been so long locked up from the world. The great Kanawha coal-fields and iron- and salt-mines are unsurpassed by any now known in any part of the globe. In the large demand from England and Europe for coal, which is finding expression in the large orders sent to Philadelphia and Baltimore for Pennsylvania and Maryland coal,[D] there is the best possible evidence that the local trade of the national canal would be enormous. So highly thought of is the Kanawha cannel coal that it is now shipped down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans, and sent thence by sea to New York, where it brings per ton about three times the price of anthracite in that market. It is equal to the best English and Nova Scotia cannel, while the Kanawha bituminous and splint coals are unsurpassed by any others. The veins lie horizontally, and vary from three to fifteen feet in thickness, the aggregate thickness of the various strata amounting in some localities to forty or fifty feet of the solid carbon. But, great as are the local interests and the trade of the water-line, they are entirely lost sight of in the national aspect of the question. The population now demanding a direct and central highway for its great inland commerce, according to the best estimates (those of Poor), cannot fall short of fifteen millions, and most probably exceeds that number. It is now conclusively established that the centre of gravity of our national population has crossed the Appalachian chain. Professor Hilgard of the Coast Survey prepared a year ago, at the request of the Hon. J. A. Garfield of Ohio, a series of calculations to ascertain this centre of gravity by the four last censuses. Supposing a plane of the exact shape and size of the United States, exclusive of Alaska, loaded with the actual population, he determined the points on which it would balance. In the recently-published words[E] of Mr. Garfield we give the following results of Professor Hilgard's calculations: By this process he found that in 1840 the centre of gravity of the population was at a point in Virginia near the eastern foot of the Appalachian chain, and near the parallel of 39 deg. N. latitude. In 1850 this centre had moved westward fifty-seven miles across the mountains, to a point nearly south of Parkersburg, Virginia. In 1860 it had moved westward eighty-two miles, to a point nearly south of Chillicothe, Ohio. In 1870 it had reached a point near Wilmington, Clinton county, Ohio, about forty-five miles north-east of Cincinnati. In no case had it widely departed from the thirty-ninth parallel. If the same rate be maintained during the next three decades, which I doubt, it will fall in the neighborhood of Bloomington, Indiana, by 1900. Professor Hilgard also found that a line drawn from Lake Erie, at the north-eastern corner of Ohio, to Pensacola