The Panama Canal

One of the latest engineering schemes concerning the Panama canal proposea the construetion of four locks - two at each end of a central level only seventy-five feet above the ocean - instead oí the old plan of several levéis and from eight to ten locks between 122 and 17E feet above the sea. As this would involve an inoreased amount of rock and soil cutting, it is proposed by M. Bartissol, the autjior of the plan, to disposs of the extra material thus excavated by a thirteen-foot tunnel, some 30,000 ieqf. in length through which the debris will be washed, water foi this purpose to be brought through an open channel from a dam on the Chagres river; that is, there would be allowed a fall of about one foot to evers thousand of length, the current filling the tunnel to a 'ight of some ten feet, a flow of ten feet per second it is estimated being thus secured, discharging one million cubic meters daily. One hundred shafts cut into this tunnel would empty into it only about forty thousand cubie meters of solid material in twenty-four hours, so that only about four per cent of the dischar&id mixture would be earth or stone.