means of which, the masters of the world pushed their conquests even to this island.

Gravesend Line.—It is well known that this bill was lost at the second Reading. The true history of it remains a secret; but, surprise is not lessened, since it has been generally admitted, that it was one of the best laid out lines for its length in England. Scandal, of course, deals pretty liberally with this as with all other subjects, on the one hand it has been stated that the directors, men of the highest character, were made the dupes of one of the foulest conspiracies ever planned; and, on the other, that the authorities were persuaded into a belief that the Greenwich pensioners would be disturbed by the trains passing so near the hospital. Poor old fellows, it would be infinitely more likely to amuse them and make them chew their quid the better. However this may be, up to the moment of the second reading, moved by Sir. William Geary-who, it appears, held pretty largely in the rival South-eastern line-the directors were led to believe that no interruption to the second reading would be given, but while the mover was on his legs, it is said that an express came, withholding the consent of the

crown.

Be this as it may, the deed is done; but the two companies, the Gravesend and the Dover, have at length united their interest to find and secure the best line to Dover; and there is little doubt but that they have now a line from Deptford to Dover, which for its levels, quantity of traffic, and the general interests of the county, cannot be equalled by any other line.

Great Northern and Eastern Counties Railway.-A sharp contest is expected between these lines.

Grand Connexion Railway.-Some opposition of views appears to be -pending between this Company and that of the Birmingham, Dudley, and Wolverhampton Railway; the latter requiring that the Grand Connexion line from Worcester shall unite with their line at Dudley; and in the event of the Grand Connexion Company not acceding to such arrangement, the extension of the Birmingham, Dudley and Wolverhampton line to Worcester, there to unite with the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway is threatened, and the two lines would thus be brought into collision.

The Great Western Railway.-At a numerous meeting of the directors and shareholders it appeared that the district between Bath and Bristol was in such a state of forwardness as to leave no doubt that that portion of the railway would be constructed within the time contracted for. The subscriptions for the intersectional line of railroad to connect the Great Western with Stroud and Gloucester were complete. The only obstacle that the directors had to contend with was in respect to a terminus to the road in the metropolis.

London and Port of Portsmouth Railway.-The railway thus denominated has for its objects the forming of a railroad communication between Portsmouth and London, and by the same line to effect a similar communication between the west and north of England.

Preston and Wyre Railway.-This undertaking is about to be commenced immediately. The drawings and specifications for executing that portion of the line from the Harbour of Wyre to Kirkham will be ready for inspection in the course of the present month; and the whole line of railway from Wyre to Preston is to be completed in twelve months.

Railway from London to Porthynblyn. It is proposed that the line shall proceed in the most direct route between the two termini; it will emerge

from Montgomeryshire beyond Newton and passing along the valley of the Teme, skirt Ludlow, pass near Worcester, thence to Stratford, Oxford, &c. Some variations have been proposed in the plan for what we must be permitted to call the "Oxfordshire" railroad. It is now proposed that the line considered as commencing in the Southampton Railway at Basingstoke, passing the Great Western, and proceeding directly north to Oxford and Banbury, should incline beyond Bading a little westward instead of a little eastward, thus passing not far from Warwick, and entering the great London and Birmingham Railway at Stone Bridge, between Coventry and Birmingham. From Stone Bridge the lines of other intended railways proceed to Derby, to Manchester, and to Preston. A survey is also being made for an intended railway from Preston and the important Lancashire districts which shall pass the Shap Fells. This difficult part once accomplished, the remainder of the line beyond Carlisle embraces Glasgow and Paisley, and promises to be the best course for Edinburgh, and almost the whole of Scotland. The whole of the plan, as concerns Oxfordshire, is superior to the former, as far as regards Manchester, but inferior as regards Leeds and the direct north line.

A line of railway is proposed from Rugby to Basingstoke for the purpose of reaching the south of England.

Railway from Gloucester to Birmingham.—The inhabitants of Tewksbury are organizing a most effective course of opposition to the Gloucester and Birmingham Railway; we understand the petition was signed by nearly every respectable inhabitant in the place in a very short time; and when sent off by the mail measured seven yards in length, with double rows of names, and columns for the description of each person signing.

FOREIGN RAILROADS.

Vienna, March 11th.-The demand for shares in the proposed iron railroad to Galicia surpasses all expectation. Yesterday the subscription already amounted to 18,000,000 of florins; as the expense is estimated at 12,000,000 only, it was not possible to accept all the offers.

The banker, Baron Von Sina, has presented to the Emperor a plan for an iron railroad to go from Vienna to Gongo, below Raab, to be constructed at his expense, and to go by way of Odenburg; and it is hoped the Emperor will approve of the plan. If this railroad should be carried into effect, Gongo may become the staple place for steam boats, as it has a fine harbour, and the current of the Danube from that place is rapid.

RAILROAD FROM NUREMBERG TO FURTH.

Nuremberg, March 15th.-On the general meeting of the shareholders in the iron railroad it appeared, that in the first quarter of a year, just ended, 74,000 persons had made use of it, which produced a receipt of 10,000 florins. It appeared further, that taking the minimum of the receipt during the winter, as the standard for the whole year, the dividend must be 13 or 14 per cent. The shares have, of course, risen still higher, and cannot now be had at 250 florins.

The editor has received a letter from Mr. Bagster, the manager of this railway, of which the following are extracts :-"The selling price is from 59 to 601. A dividend of 253. per share was paid Sept. 1, 1835; the last half year's balance sheet shows a clear working balance of more than 6 per cent. per share. The traffic in coal exceeds 3,000 tons weekly, besides lime and granite; and continues increasing."

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In this age of experiment and research, when men seek to rival birds in the celerity of their motions, and to make tea-kettles their wings, it is rather extraordinary that the effects of one of the greatest opponents to their success should have been almost entirely overlooked. But engineers, whose business it is to deal in clods, bricks, and stone, who plume themselves on the power of an engine capable of whirling along at twenty miles an hour, thirty, fifty, or a hundred tons, seem to think themselves omnipotent, and that a body so light as air is utterly unworthy of their notice, overlooking that the very agent they use is little better than half the weight of the body they despise. Thus it is that we hear some of them occasionally talking of making an engine to travel with its train eighty or one hundred miles an hour. With men of science such absurd assertions only create a smile-with the ignorant a stare of wonder. Let them produce an engine to average fifty miles an hour with a fair load on a railway, and they will richly deserve the thanks of the community. This probably is quite as much as they are ever likely to do; and to promise more, appears to savour of drunken boasting rather than of sober reason. But we will at once proceed with a subject that will in the sequel speak plainer, and with more effect, than any thing we can say; for it will speak the language of generalized facts.

Great uncertainty at present exists as to the actual force of the wind under different velocities, and but few experiments on the subject have come to my knowledge. The difficulty, perhaps, arises from measuring the exact velocity of the wind, or in the reverse case to obtain a rectilinear motion of any length in which the velocity and pressure can be well determined. Dr. Hutton mentions Mr. Smeaton having been furnished with a table of the force of the wind under different velocities, by a Mr. Rouse, probably the father of the present solicitor of that name at Woodbridge, Suffolk, a gentleman who had it seems a great taste for the mixed mathematical sciences. The Doctor compliments the accordance of these results with his own experiments, though at a velocity of 80 miles an hour, Mr. Rouse's table gives a pressure of 31 lbs. to the square foot, and Dr. Hutton's under

26lbs. At lower velocities of course the difference diminishes very rapidly.

Struck with the great amount of the pressure on a moving train, I was induced, since little dependence can be placed on inferential deductions at high velocities, from experiments at low, and since the experiment of Dr. Hutton, from which he forms his table, was made at the velocity of only 13.64 miles an hour, to try if I could not deduce the amount of pressure at once, from the same physical principles, from which I solved in our first number, that most refractory problem, the determining of the true velocity of sound. Let my readers judge, from a comparison with Hutton's table, whether I have been successful.

In the paper alluded to, I shewed that sound was transmitted by the air with the same velocity with which the particles actually moved in the atmosphere; and consequently it follows, that if a body moved in the atmosphere with a velocity equal to that of sound, the air in the rear of it would just be able to follow, but not to press on it. So that at this velocity, the body would just sustain the whole weight of the atmosphere; and the pressure on it would be the same as if it supported the air almost with a vacuum on one side of it. But by the calculation in the paper alluded to, the velocity of sound at the temperature of water freezing, is 1090 feet per second, or 743 18 miles per hour. At this velocity, therefore, and when the barometer is thirty inches, the weight of a cubic inch of mercury being 49078 lbs., the pressure on every square foot will be '49078 x 30 x 144 2120 17 lbs. If, then, we start from this point, and compute the pressure for inferior velocities in the duplicate ratio of the said velocities, it will give the pressures at such velocities very nearly; for any error which may exist in the non-accordance of the law of the pressures with the squares of the velocities, will diminish very rapidly, and be almost insensible in such low velocities as we need, that is, velocities under 80 miles an hour, considering the high velocity from which we start.

At 80 miles an hour, our pressure comes out 24.56 lbs.; Dr. Hutton's is 25.75 lbs., and Mr. Rouse's 31.49 lbs. In this very high velocity, therefore, for a moving train, we are only 1 lbs. beneath the experimental deduction of Hutton; and at the velocity near which he made his experiment, that is fourteen miles an hour, we are 0.75 lbs., and he 0.79 lbs.; that is, differing only 0.04 of a pound.

This close agreement with experiment, I cannot help here observing, is another proof of the accuracy of our physical principles, and on a branch of science to which it was little expected they would apply.

The force of the wind, as it is called, or the resistance of the atmosphere to a moving body, appears to have been given by Hutton and others generally, with little reference to the height of the barometer, and I believe none whatever to the temperature of the atmosphere. This latter quantity seems to be an element never