During the year 1888 attention was called to a project for the union of the Bristol and English Channels by a ship canal, running from Stolford, near Bridgwater, which has the advantage of being opposite Cardiff, _viâ_ Bridgwater, Taunton, and Exeter, to Langstone Point, on the west side of Exmouth Bight, where the southern harbour would be formed. This route is described as offering every facility for the work, the chief elevation, White Ball Hill, which is 536 feet high, being turned by following the course of the old Great Western Canal. A part of the existing canals, or their remains, and the floating basin at Exeter, with its 5½ miles of canal to the Exe, are intended to be acquired, and the deepest cutting on the whole system will not exceed 200 feet. The canal would be on the level of the sea, taking its supply chiefly from that source, with sea-locks only at each end. The dimensions proposed are: length, 62 miles; width at surface, 125 feet, at bottom, 36 feet; and depth 21 feet, the figures being much the same as those of the ship canal from Amsterdam to the Helder, which admits loaded vessels of 1000 to 1500 tons, drawing 18 feet. Coal from South Wales and adjoining fields would be likely to provide a large revenue for a short cut to the English Channel, and thence to London, say 355 miles, in order to better compete with the North of England. The cost of the scheme has been set down at 3,080,000_l._ PROPOSED WATERWAYS FROM BIRMINGHAM TO THE SEA. Of all the towns in the United Kingdom that labour under the disadvantage of being remote from the sea, none are so entirely excluded from sea competition as the capital of the Midlands. Birmingham is unlike most of the other cities and towns of the country in this respect, that it is neither built upon a navigable river, nor upon any other waterway that would be likely to secure for traders some relief from their almost abject dependence upon railway transport. And yet the town and district of Birmingham are not altogether without the means of water transport. The locality is, in point of fact, the centre of a network of canals, which, if they were properly adapted to its requirements, would place it in direct communication by water with all the principal ports and markets in the kingdom. By the Birmingham, Warwick and Birmingham, Warwick and Napton, Oxford, Grand Junction, and Regent’s Canals it is placed in communication with the metropolis, although the distance is 163½ miles, as against only 100 miles by the shortest railway route. It has two similar routes to the great port of Liverpool—the first by the Birmingham, Staffordshire and Worcestershire, North Staffordshire, and Bridgwater Canals, and the river Mersey; the second route by the same route as regards the Birmingham Canal, and thence _viâ_ the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal for a mile and a quarter, until the Shropshire Canal is broached, when the route is continued over this waterway for a distance of 68