of chivalry scattered over
both Christian and Mussulman lands, a wealthy aspirant may not despair
of reaching one or two of them without the pangs of knight errantry.

PHILIP QUILIBET.

SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.

COMPLICATIONS OF THE CHANNEL TUNNEL.

Baron von Weber, a distinguished English engineer, predicts that the
Channel tunnel between England and France, if constructed, will be the
cause of great annoyance to English railway managers, and bring forward
some very acute observations in support of this opinion.

_The English railway system was a world of its own_; it was an insular
world which could hardly have been more peculiar if it had belonged to
another quarter of the globe altogether. All this, however, will change
as soon as the tunnel is pierced between England and the Continent.

_England will then no longer be an island, but a peninsula_, and
although the isthmus which connects it with the Continent will be
submarine, its effect on the railway system will be exactly the same as
if it were a natural one.

If the importance of the object to be attained by the Channel tunnel is
to bear any rational proportion at all to the means required, the tunnel
will be constructed only if a very considerable goods traffic between
the two shores is expected, besides the large passenger traffic. Such a
traffic, which would have to compete with sea carriage, is only possible
for goods if shifting the loads is completely avoided, and the wagons
and trucks can run from England far into the Continent and _vice versa_.
Now the English exports to the Continent far exceed the imports from it.
The English trucks, therefore, loaded with rails, machines, coals,
cotton goods, etc., will, after passing the tunnel, be scattered far and
wide on the continental railways (whose length exceeds threefold that of
the whole British system), and will have to run distances five times as
great as from London to the Highlands.

The English railway companies, who are now able to follow their rolling
stock almost with the naked eye, who know exactly how long each truck
will take to run the short distances in their island, who can,
therefore, provide proper loads both for the up and down journeys,
hence making the best use of their stock, and who are always aware in
whose hands their trucks are, will suddenly see a great number of them
disappear out of their sight and beyond their control o