The Earne and Shannon rivers have three features which render them, in Mr. Lynam’s opinion, peculiarly easy to regulate their floods, and prevent inundations. They have large superficial areas of lakes. Their channels between the lakes are wide and deep, so capacious as to carry their floods with an inclination of less than an inch a mile. Their floods rise slowly, 4 inches to 8 inches in twenty-four hours, very rarely rising 1 foot in twenty-four hours. On the Shannon, all the mill-weirs and fish-weirs have been purchased and removed, and all the shoals have been deepened at a cost of 529,716_l._ The lakes in the Lough Earne basin have an area of about 50,000 acres. The shoals and straits, which obstruct the river and cause the inundations, have an aggregate length of merely 6 miles. Only one mill-weir (which is the only fish-weir) exists, and it is at the outlet, where there is a fall of 12 feet. The Shannon basin has lakes of the superficial area of 87,000 acres. In the length, from the Battle Bridge above Carrick-on-Shannon to Killaloe Bridge, of 128 miles, the lakes occupy 50½ miles; the broad, deep channel extends for 73½ miles; the confined portions of the channel occupy merely 4 miles; the portions of the channel confined so as to be visible obstructions are but 2 miles long. Neither mill-weir nor fish-weir stands in the way of the current. The floods scarcely ever rise 1 foot in twenty-four hours. The great floods are but 4 feet where deepest on the lands, and generally but 2 feet deep, and merely 18 inches deep over large areas. Many damaging floods are not more than 6 inches deep on the land. From Lough Allen to the tide of the Atlantic Ocean at Limerick, a length of 149 miles by the sinuosities of the river, the Shannon has been made navigable for steamers with a depth of 6 feet of water. The river lies naturally in eight separate levels, but the lowest, at Limerick, is very small, and detached from the others by a length of 5 miles and a fall of 90 feet. The upper level, at the outlet from Lough Allen, has a fall of 20 feet in 6 miles. The lowest level, between Castleconnell and Killaloe, contains only 641 acres of lowland, rarely flooded in summer or autumn, and rarely covered by more than 1½ foot of water. To preserve the land from summer and autumn floods the surface of the floods must be lowered 2 feet nearly. A permanently solid embankment, used during many years for a navigation horse tow-path, extends along one side of the river, the only openings being four culverts for side drainage.