shown before the draw was secured, which should have been impossible. [7] Chapters XVII and XVIII. Prior to the year 1873 there is no consecutive record of this or any other class of railroad accidents occurring in America, but during the six years 1873-8 there occurred twenty-one cases of minor disaster at draws, three only of them to passenger trains. Altogether, excluding the Shrewsbury river accident, these resulted in the death of five employés and injury to one other. No passenger was hurt. In Great Britain not a single case of disaster of any description has been reported as occurring at a draw-bridge since the year 1870, when the present system of official Board of Trade reports was begun. The lesson clearly to be drawn from a careful investigation of all the American accidents reported would seem to be that a statute provision making compulsory the interlocking of all draws in railroad bridges with a proper and infallible system of signals might have claims on the consideration of an intelligent legislature; not so an enactment which compels the stopping of trains at points where danger is small, and makes no provision as respects other points where it is great. CHAPTER XI. BRIDGE ACCIDENTS. Great as were the terrors inspired by the Norwalk disaster in those comparatively early days of railroad experience, and deep as the impression on the public memory must have been to leave its mark on the statute book even to the present time, that and the similar disaster at the Richelieu river are believed to have been the only two of great magnitude which have occurred at open railroad draws. That this should be so is well calculated to excite surprise, for the draw-bridge precautions against accident in America are wretchedly crude and inadequate, amounting as a rule to little more than the primitive balls and targets by day and lanterns by night, without any system of alarms or interlocking. Electricity as an adjunct to human care, or a corrective rather of human negligence, is almost never used; and, in fact, the chief reliance is still on the vigilance of engine-drivers. But, if accidents at draws have been comparatively rare and unattended with any considerable loss of life, it has been far otherwise with the rest of the structures of which the draw forms a part. Bridge accidents in fact always have been, and will probably always remain, incomparably the worst to which travel by rail is exposed. It would be impossible for corporations to take too great precautions against them, and that the precautions taken are very great is conclusively shown by the fact that, with thousands of bridges many times each day subjected to the strain of the passage at speed of heavy trains, so very few disasters occur. When they do occur, however, the lessons taught by them are, though distinct enough, apt to be in one important respect of a far less satisfactory character than those taught by collisions.