Length. Breadth. 1812. Comet 40 feet 10-1/2 feet. 1825. Enterprise (built expressly to go to India, coaling at intermediate stations) 122 " 27 " 1835. Tagus (for Mediterranean) 182 " 28 " 1838. Great Western (the first ship built expressly for Transatlantic service) 236 " 35-1/2 " 1844. Great Britain (the first large screw ship, and largest iron ship up to that time) 322 " 51 " 1853. Himalaya (iron) 370 " 43-1/2 " 1856. Persia (do.) 390 " 45 " 1859. Great Eastern (do.) 680 " 83 " In the interval between 1812 and 1870 the number of steamers in the United Kingdom has increased from one to nearly three thousand; and the ocean-going steamer of 1870 is nearly six times the length of that of 1825, and seventeen times the length of the _Comet_, while the difference in tonnage is still greater. How Fulton or Bell would open their eyes at the sight of a vast moving city, such as the Big Ship, an eighth of a mile in length, propelled by both paddle-wheels and screw, each worked by four huge engines! Iron Manufacture. HENRY CORT. Iron Manufacture. HENRY CORT. The multifarious use of iron in our day has given its name to the age. We have got far beyond the primitive applications of that metal--every day it is supplanting some other substance, and there is no saying where the wide-spread and varied service we exact from it will stop. The invention of the steam-engine, and the improvement of manufacturing machines, would be comparatively valueless, unless we had at command a cheap and abundant supply of iron for their construction. The land is covered with a net-work of iron rails, traversed by iron steeds--gulfs and valleys are spanned by iron arches and iron tubes--huge ships of iron ride upon the deep. Even stones and bricks are being discarded for this all-useful substance, and of iron we are building houses, palaces, theatres, churches, and spacious domes. There is no end to its uses.