A Railway Under The Sea

For many years European people have talked freely of tome way of gettiug themselves and their freights from the continent to England and back again without the delay and discomfiture of that horrible two hours' passage from Calais to Dover. Swinging cabins haye been proposed - tried, if we are not mistaken - to relieve passengers of that prostrating nausea that they feel there, if nowhere else. Immense steamers were planned - we believe commenced - which should ferry over rail way trains without change of load. One intellectual idiot spent much money in perfecting plans for a bridge to be erected on immense piers resting on the ocean bed-rock, and, finally, the wild chimera (as we then called it) of a submarino tunnel was proected. But the world has advanced since then, and the chimera has assumed a realistio appearance. We have forced a hole through the Hoosao range, we have tunneled Mont Cenis ; we have run the sea through the Isthmus of Suez ; we have stretched a telegraph wire round the world; and, fimilly, we begin to imagine why shouldu't we tunnel the British ohannel? It is only twenty-five miles of boring. And so work in the first stages, has commenced quietly but understandingly. Eminent geologists are making explorations to discover whether the rock strata are of a charactor to sustain the weight of the water above without too much masonry. Upon that rests the whole question. If, it is believed, it provea that tbe gray chalk which forins the channel cliffs stretohes across the channel bed in sufnoient thickness to encase the tunnel in its waterproof armor, the scheme has no insuperable mechanical obstacle. The expense is then the only question, and it s believed that that can bü readily provided for.