of a ship. Now, wire ropes are coming
extensively into use for standing-rigging, their
strength presenting a favourable contrast to
that of hempen ropes. The General Screw
Company's ships Propontis, Bosphorus,
and Hellespont, have wire-rope standing-
rigging; and it is said that the Hellespont,
on one of her voyages, put the wire rope to a
severe test; for, during a shattering and
clattering of booms and sheet-cleets, the iron
wire shrouds broke a boom, instead of the
boom breaking the shrouds.

Wire is getting into public buildings, in positions
and situations where one would scarcely
look for it. For instance, an ingenious firm
set themselves to consider whether wire
might not fulfil the duty of lath and plaster
for ceilings; and the Chester County
Lunatic Asylum affords an answer in the
affirmative. There are wires placed about a
quarter of an inch apart, and connected by
cross wires, at intervals of about eight inches,
and this arrangement affords a holding-place
for the plaster, with which the ceiling is
afterwards coated. As wire bends so easily,
it is considered that such a construction is
likely to be highly useful in domes and
arched ceilings. And as wire gets among
the plasterers, so does it find a reception
among the cotton-spinners; for the cotton is
carded, as a preparatory step towards spinning,
by means of cylinders studded all over
with fine wire teeth, springing out of strips
of leather and arranged in scrupulous order
by a beautiful machine, which does the work
of a forest of fingers at once.

The grandest achievement, perhaps, of the
world's wire-workers, is the formation of a
bridge, or rather the support of a bridge made
of other materials. This is really a great and
important work. Engineers say that iron
wire is stronger, weight for weight, than bar-
iron; that cables of wire can be put together
more readily than chains; and that wire
cables are more easily lifted into their places
than bar-chains. At least some engineers
say this, and they have given proof of their
belief in the construction of very remarkable
bridges. Travellers in Switzerland speak
with wonderment of the wire- bridge at
Freyburg; in which the span from pier to pier is
nearly nine hundred feet; in which the
platform is nearly a hundred and seventy feet
above the water; which platform is
supported by four cables, each consisting of
more than a thousand iron wires. They
speak, too, of another wire bridge across the
gorge of Gotterou. But these bridges have
been outdone by others which have recently
been thrown across the mighty Niagara,
owing to the extraordinary nature of the
falls, and rapids, and boiling eddies ruling
beneath. With a span of eight hundred feet
from shore to shore, and a height of two
hundred and sixty feet above the water, a
light and elegant bridge presents its delicate
tracery of wire-work against the sky, near the
great North American Falls, in an
extraordinary manner.

There are sixteen wire cables to support
the bridge; there are six hundred wires in
each cable; and these wire cables less than
an inch in thickness, support a foot-bridge
which weighs altogether more than six
hundred tons. The bridge is about a mile
and a half below the widely-renowned
Falls, and directly over the frightful rapids.
It was finished about six years ago; but
there has since been constructed another
Niagara wire bridge, to be traversed by the
locomotive, and intended to connect the railway
system of the United States with that
of Canada. In this remarkable bridge, the
trains, instead of running through a tube, as
in our Britannia Bridge, run along the top
of a tube; the tube being supported by four
wire cables, two above, and two below; and
as these enormous cables are nine inches in
diameter, and contain nearly three thousand
four hundred wires each, we may perchance
be prepared to expect that the weight of
iron-wire employed exceeds half a million
pounds. A wire bridge over the Ohio, at
Wheeling, though not comprising so many
wires in the cables, is longer than those at
Niagara; it is indeed no trifling achievement
to support a bridge a thousand feet long by
wire; there are twelve cables of four inches
diameter, each containing five hundred and
fifty wires. If the good people of Quebec
ever have the fortune to witness the completion
of the proposed railway bridge over the
mighty St. Lawrence, they will see a wire
bridge that will throw all others into the
shade. A bridge three thousand four
hundred feet long, with the piers three hundred
feet high, and sixteen hundred feet apart;
a roadway wide enough both for horse-
vehicles and for a railway, at a height of
a hundred and sixty feet above the water,
and all supported by wire ropes—will be a
monument of skill, enterprise, and utility,
which—with the grand trunk railway itself
—will help the Canadians to a better
character for perseverance and activity than
they have hitherto enjoyed.

It is a brave affair to make an electrotelegraphic
cable. We are accustomed to such
things now; but two or three years ago they
were wonders to be marvelled at. When
Messrs. Newall produced the wire-work, and
the Gutta Percha Company produced the gutta
percha work, for the Anglo-French submarine
telegraph in the summer of eighteen hundred
and fifty-one, the achievement was worthily
recorded as an honour to our age. Many of
those who now read this sheet will remember
that the cable was twenty-four miles long;
that it consisted essentially of four copper
wires insulated in a bed of gutta percha; the
strand or cord thus formed was bound round
tightly with spun yarn; and around this
strand, as a central core, were twisted ten
galvanised iron wires. A huge mass it was;