But the great feature of late years in canal engineering is not the preservation or improvement of the ordinary internal canal, but the provision of canals, such as the completed Suez canal, the Panama canal in course of construction, the contemplated Isthmus of Corinth canal--all for saving circuitous journeys in passing from one sea to another; or in the case nearer home of the Manchester ship canal, for taking ocean steamers many miles inland. But the old fight between the canal engineer and the railway engineer, or, more properly speaking, between the engineer when he had his canal "stop" on and the same individual when he has his railway "stop"--you will see that I am borrowing a figure, either from Dombey & Son, where Mr. Feeder, B.A., is shown to us with his Herodotus "stop" on, or, as is more likely, I am thinking of the organs to be exhibited in the Second division, "Music," of that exhibition of which I have the honor to be chairman--I am afraid this is a long parenthesis breaking the continuity of my observations, which related to the old rivalry between canal and railway engineering. I was about to say that this rivalry was revived, even in the case of the transporting of ocean vessels from sea to sea, for we know that our distinguished member, Mr. Eads, is proposing to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by means of a ship railway across the Isthmus of Panama. He suggests that the largest vessels should be raised out of the water, in the manner commonly employed in floating docks, and should then be transferred to a truck-like cradle on wheels, fitted with hydraulic bearing blocks (this being, however, not a new proposition as applied to graving docks), so as to obtain practical equality of support for the ship, notwithstanding slight irregularities in the roadway, while he proposes to deal with the question of changes of direction by the avoidance of curves and by the substitution of angles, having at the point of junction of the two sides turntables on which the cradle and ship will be drawn; these can be moved with perfect ease, notwithstanding the heavy load, because the turntable will be floating in water carried in circular tanks.