ever since the Creation, yet this polishing and grinding is the extent of the effect which they will be able to produce upon a work probably destined to hold its own as long as Portland itself.” The rapidity with which the breakwater was constructed reflected great credit on Mr. Coode. The actual routine of the construction followed, when the line for the structure had been sounded and carefully marked out, was to commence piling for the railway that was to carry the long trains of wagons filled with the stone; and when a short piece of this was completed, to go on “tipping in” the rubble and rough stone till they made their appearance above water at last; then the piling was carried forward a few yards more, and the process repeated, and so on by successive stages to the completion of the work. All appears very simple on paper until we learn that it had to be accomplished through eleven fathoms of rough tumbling waves. One night’s rough weather often swept away the timber-work that cost many thousands of pounds, and many months of labour to construct and fix in its position in the sea. The piling that had to resist the action of a deep and heavy sea, and to carry also, at a height of 90 feet, a railway for the heaviest traffic, required to be something more than a common framework of timber. Every log used had to be first of all saturated to its very centre with creosote, and this was done in a most ingenious manner. A great boiler, 100 feet long and 7 feet in diameter, was filled with the largest and finest logs procurable; the mouth being closed with a solid air-tight cover, the air was pumped out, not only from the tube, but from the very pores of the wood itself. When the vacuum was as complete as possible, the creosote was admitted from tanks at the bottom and forced into the timber by hydraulic power of about 300 lbs. to the square inch. In this the logs remained for two or three days, by which time the creosote was forced into the fibre of the wood. Several of the logs thus prepared were bolted and bound together, till one huge spar 90 feet long, and eight or nine tons in weight, was formed. Then an iron “Mitchell” screw—as used in the lighthouses built on sands, already described—was affixed at the lower end, and the whole sunk till it rested on the bottom, when it was worked round by a capstan till it was firmly screwed into the clay. Thus secured, they were tolerably safe, though single heavy waves would uproot piles and moorings together, to obviate which two or three piles were generally set at the same time, and well bound together by powerful cross timbers.