to meet his engagements “on the nail,” and entire independence of the weather, which freezes up the canal and river navigation during one-half of the year. For the same reasons that the grower and exporter of wheat was willing to pay 9_d._ more per bushel to the railway in 1868, he has been willing to pay gradually diminishing differences since, until he has now to pay the railway no more than 3½_d._ per bushel in excess of the canal rate for more than a thousand miles of transportation. All this, however, can hardly be said to prove anything against canals, although it undoubtedly proves that in the special circumstances of the wheat trade, and of the Erie Canal, the American freighter of cereals gives a preference to railroad transportation. In the case of heavier traffic, the position would probably be reversed, and especially if the navigation were open all the year round, as would be likely in a temperate climate like that of England, instead of being liable, as in the case of the Erie Canal, to be frozen up for one-half of the year. Of the fifty canals that are now constructed in the United States, thirteen were completed, or at any rate begun, between 1825 and 1830. Some of the earlier canals were very expensive. The Erie Canal cost 90,000 dollars per mile, with a capacity for boats of over 250 tons. The more recently constructed Illinois and Michigan Canal which admits of the passage of boats of 2500 tons, from Chicago to the Mississippi river, was only 55,355 dollars per mile. The locks on this canal are now 350 feet long, and 75 feet wide, admitting twelve canal boats at a time. From the Report of the Tenth Census of the United States, we have compiled the following details of the principal existing canals in that country:—