While these views were entertained about a waterway that promised to become the general and almost exclusive means of communication between the West and the East, between Great Britain and her Australasian and Indian possessions, it is not much a matter for surprise that other projects of a similar character remained in abeyance. But the Suez Canal once completed and successful, other ship canal schemes came “thick as autumnal leaves in Vallombrosa.” Several of these were eminently practical, as well as practicable. The Hellenic Parliament determined on cutting through the tongue of land which is situated between the Gulfs of Athens and Lepantus, known as the Isthmus of Corinth. This isthmus divides the Adriatic and the Archipelago, and compels all vessels passing from the one sea to the other to round Cape Matapan, thus materially lengthening the voyages of vessels bound from the western parts of Europe to the Levant, Asia Minor and Smyrna. The canal is now an accomplished fact. Another proposal was that of cutting a canal from Bordeaux to Marseilles, across the South of France, a distance of some 120 miles, whereby these two great ports would be brought 1678 miles nearer to each other, and a further reduction, estimated at 800 miles, effected in the distance between England and India. The Panama Canal (projected in 1871, and actually commenced in 1880) is, however, the greatest enterprise of all, and in many respects the most gigantic and difficult undertaking of which there is any record. The proposed national canal from sea to sea, proposed by Mr. Samuel Lloyd and others for Great Britain, the proposed Sheffield Ship Canal, the proposed Irish Sea and Birkenhead Ship Canal, and the proposed ship canal to connect the Forth and the Clyde, are but a few of many notable examples of the restlessness of our times in this direction. All these canals are intended to economise time and space, which has become the greatest desideratum of our age. By fulfilling this mission they facilitate commerce, cheapen the cost of commodities, bring nations into closer touch, and materially lengthen the sum of work and knowledge that can be crowded into the average span of human life.