This digression finished, we proceed to state the cost at which each of the four European leviathans of the railway world have been constructed. The capital expenditure of the South Austrian and Alta Italia, up to the 31st December, 1866, was £41,763,301, or at the rate of £18,200 a mile. Capital expenditure on the Paris, Lyons, and Mediterranean Company is nearly double that of the South Austrian and Alta Italia, being £80,922,000, which brings the cost per mile to £36,218. This expenditure is exclusive of £1,740,202, upon the Algerian lines, making the company’s total capital expenditure to the 31st December, 1866, £82,662,202. As the total length of French railways was, on the 31st December, 1866, 14,382 kilometres, or 8,989 miles, and the total capital expenditure upon them to that date was £306,089,000, it follows that the Paris, Lyons, and Mediterranean Company is one-fourth in length, all but twenty-eight miles, of the total railway mileage of France, but its gross cost has exceeded one-fourth of the total cost of French railways by £4,399,500, and its cost per mile, being £36,218, it has exceeded their average cost per mile (£34,051) by £2,167. The capital expenditure of the Orleans Company has been £42,944,862, or at the rate of £20,928 a mile, which is £13,123 per mile _below_ the average cost per mile of French railways. In addition, the company is proprietor of the coal and iron mines, and the Iron Works of Aubin, at a cost of £671,216. 194,694 tons of coal were raised there in 1866, of which 43,200 were used by the company’s locomotives, 16,000 were sold to the public, and the balance was consumed in the iron works, which manufactured 22,021 of rails during the year. The total expenditure on capital account of all the railways of the United Kingdom up to the 1st January, 1866, was £455,478,143. On the London and North-Western the expenditure on capital account has been £45,576,361, but a subdivision of this capital by the mileage worked by the company would not represent the cost per mile of the railway as the company is subscriber to the capital of other companies (some of which are worked by it and some are not) for £3,556,969, but this amount hardly represents a tenth of the capital expended by those companies. There is no doubt however that the cost per mile of those lines for which the capital was exclusively provided by the London and North-Western Company exceeds £50,000 a mile.