the air can be carried by the air-pump. It must also be evident that the difficulty of keeping the pipe air-tight will increase with its length, and with the pressure obtained. The vacuum-pipe on the branch of the Birmingham, Bristol, and Thames Junction Railway, where the atmospheric system has been in operation for more than three years, is only 9 inches internal diameter, and but half a mile long. It is on an incline of part 1 in 120, and part 1 in 115. A vacuum, equal in some instances to a column of mercury 23 inches high, has been obtained, and loads of 13 tons have been propelled. On the Dalkey branch of the Dublin and Kingstown Railway, the pipe is 15 inches in diameter, and its length, so far as it has been tried, is one mile and a quarter. The average incline is 1 in 100; the exhaustion has been extended to 22 inches of mercury, and three carriages loaded with passengers have been propelled up the incline at a speed exceeding 40 miles an hour.-See the engravings of this Railway, in the Illustrated London News, No. 88; also the substance of the Report to Parliament on this invention, in Year-Book of Facts, 1843, p. 14.

A PAPER, by Mr. J. O. York, who has a patent for Hollow Axles, was read at a late meeting of the Institution of Civil Engineers, giving an account of some experiments which he has made for the purpose of testing their strength as compared with Solid Axles. The paper described the common causes of fracture, attributing it to the concussion and vibration produced by various circumstances, such as a bad state of the line, the sudden opposition of any obstacle on the rail, or the shocks arising from the wheels striking upon the blocks or the chairs when thrown off the line. These shocks, which it was impossible to calculate the extent of, it was contended should be provided for by axles which would bear a series of heavy blows without fracture. The force of vibration, and its tendency to produce fracture in rigid bodies, was then treated of, with its effect in destroying the most fibrous texture of iron where elasticity was prevented, as is the case with railway axles, comparing the action with that upon the axles of ordinary road carriage, where the concussion was reduced by an elastic medium, such as the wood spokes of the wheels, which were bad conductors of vibration. By calculation it was shown that the twisting strain arising from the curves of the railway was of too small an amount to be considered as a cause of destruction to the wheels or axles.

A long series of experiments which had been made in the presence of Major-General Pasley, and numerous engineers, was then read, and showed results confirmatory of the position assumed by the author of the paper. In the discussion which ensued, it was allowed that theoretically the hollow axles must be stronger than the solid ones, inasmuch as the same weight of metal was better distributed, and the practical experiments fully bore out the theory. Some curious specimens of solid axles which had borne a great number of blows before breaking, were exhibited by the Patent Axle Company, from Wednesbury. The quality of the iron was excellent, and had the same material been manufactured into hollow axles, it was agreed that many of the melancholy accidents upon railways would not have occurred.Mechanic's Magazine, No. 1022,

APPLICATION OF MANUAL POWER TO RAILWAY LOCOMOTIVES.

MR. TATE, contractor for keeping the rails and road of the Grand Junction Railway in repair, has constructed a machine, which does not weigh more than about four cwt., by which two men can, for a short time, convey it, themselves, and four men as passengers, at a speed of from 20 to 25 miles per hour; and, at half that speed, doubtless, they would carry three times that number. A little boy, not more than seven or eight years old, propelled the machine, from a state of rest to a speed of from three to four miles per hour, with the writer and another person on it, weighing together, it is imagined, not less than seven cwt.! Mr. Tate is of opinion that when labour is cheap, and under peculiar circumstances, manual labour may be even cheaper than horses or steam, especially where speed is required. The machine alluded to was made to accommodate the workmen, &c. on the line, and Mr. T. informed the writer that, with two men, he had gone fifteen miles of the line, stopping at twelve different points, within the hour. It is well known that a horse, on a good railway, will draw at least fifty passengers at the rate of twelve miles per hour; assume, therefore, that eight men shall be equal to one good horse (allowing 20 or 25 per cent. for friction of machinery, &c., we shall then still have a power equal to the horse), and, as that number exceeds the usual average number of each train on the Greenwich Railway, is there any thing to prevent six sets, or gangs, of men, performing 112 trips per day— viz. every quarter of an hour each way, for fourteen hours; fifty persons each trip, or 5,600 per day? and, if so, and able-bodied men can be procured at 2s. per day, then manual power will be cheaper than horses or steam, as this would only amount to about 1s. per trip, or about one farthing each for the whole distance of nearly four miles, or less than the sixteenth of a penny per mile! Mr. Thomas Motley.— Mining Journal.

DECORATION OF THE NEW HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.

MR. BARRY has transmitted his Report to the Commissioners on the Fine Arts, in which he thus states his views relating to the Internal Decoration of the New Houses of Parliament :

"With reference to the interior of the New Houses of Parliament, generally, I would suggest that the walls of the several halls, galleries, and corridors of approach, as well as the various public apartments throughout the building, should be decorated with paintings having reference to events in the history of the country; and that those paintings should be placed in compartments formed by such a suitable arrangement of the architectural design of the interior as will best promote their effective union with the arts of sculpture and architecture.

With this view, I should consider it to be of the utmost importance that the paintings should be entirely free from gloss on the surface, and that they may be perfectly seen and fully understood from all points of view. That all other portions of the plane surfaces of the walls should be covered with suitable architectonic decoration, or diapered enrichment in colour, occasionally heightened with gold, and blended with armorial bearings, badges, cognizances, and other

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heraldic insignia, emblazoned in their proper colours. That such of the halls as are groined should have their vaults decorated in a similar manner, with the addition occasionally of subjects or works of art, so interwoven with the diapered ground, as not to disturb the harmony or the effect of the architectural composition. That such of the ceilings as are flat should be formed into compartments by moulded ribs, enriched with carved, heraldic, and Tudor decorations. That these ceilings should be relieved by positive colour and gilding; and occasionally by gold grounds, with diaper enrichments, legends, and heraldic devices in colour. That the screens, pillars, corbels, niches, dressings of the windows, and other architectural decorations, should be painted to harmonize with the paintings and diapered decorations of the walls generally, and gilding. The door-jambs and fire-places should be constructed of British marbles, of suitable quality and colour, highly polished, and occasionally relieved by colour and gilding in their mouldings and sculptural enrichments.

"That the floor of the several halls, galleries, and corridors, should be formed of encaustic tiles, bearing heraldic decoration and other enrichments in colours, laid in margins and compartments, in combination with polished British marbles; and that the same description of marbles should also be employed for the steps of the several staircases.

"That the walls, to the height of from eight to ten feet, should be lined with oak framing, containing shields with armorial bearings, emblazoned in their proper colours, and an oak seat should in all cases be placed against such framing. That the windows of the several halls, galleries, and corridors, should be glazed doubly, for the purpose of tempering the light, and preventing the direct rays of the sun from interfering with the effect of the internal decorations generally. For this purpose, the outer plating is proposed to be of ground glass, in single plates, and the inner glazing of an ornamental design in metal, filled with stained glass, bearing arms, and other heraldic insignia, in their proper colours; but so arranged as that the ground, which I should recommend to be of a warm yellowish tint, covered with a running foliage or diaper, and occasionally relieved by legends in black letter, should predominate, in order that so much light only may be excluded as may be thought desirable to do away with either a garish or cold effect upon the paintings and decorations generally. Practically, I consider that the double glazing will be of essential service in carrying out the system of warming and ventilating proposed to be adopted in the building generally; which system renders it unnecessary that the windows in those portions of the building above referred to should be made to open, so that all prejudicial effects upon the paintings and other decorations, which might be caused by the dampness and impurity of the atmosphere, and much practical inconvenience, and probably unsightliness, in the means that would be adopted for opening and shutting casements, would be avoided.

"That in order to promote the art of sculpture, and its effective union with painting and architecture, I would propose that in the halls, galleries, and corridors, statues might be employed for the pur

pose of dividing the paintings on the walls. By this arrangement, a rich effect of perspective, and a due subordination of the several arts to each other, would be obtained. The statues suggested should, in my opinion, be of marble, of the colour of polished alabaster, and be raised upon lofty and suitable pedestals, placed close to the wall in niches, surmounted by enriched canopies; but the niches should be shallow, so that the statues may be as well seen laterally as in front.

"The architectural decoration of these niches might be painted of such colours as will give the best effect to the adjoining paintings, being relieved in parts by positive colour and gilding; and the backs of them might be painted in dark colours, such as chocolate, crimson, or blue, or they might be of gold, for the purpose of giving effect to the statues."

OPENING OF THE NEW GRAVING DOCK AT WOOLWICH.

THE opening of this stupendous work took place on July 18, when the Dock was entered for the first time by Her Majesty's Frigate, Chichester, for the purpose of being coppered, &c.

The basin in question is of solid granite, with steps, or alters, on each side, fifteen inches to one foot deep, affording facilities for descending to the bottom, and also for props or supports being affixed, thus enabling any vessel, whatever may be her size, to be supported on her keel without injury. The length 300 feet at the top of the water, 245 feet at the bottom; the width of the basin is 80 feet at the top, gradually diminishing as the basin deepens. As it approaches the bottom it presents the appearance of a perfect concave some 26 feet deep. To this basin there are two folding gates, or locks, extending the whole width of the dock, made of iron and timber doubled, and weighing about 60 tons each; and the perfection with which these gates work, and are adjusted to each other, may be seen in the fact, that though each of them is of the enormous weight of 60 tons, two men, or rather a boy and a man, can move them easily. These gates open to the general basin communicating with the Thames. The dock itself is filled by the river tide, or by a steam-engine, working with two twenty-horse boilers, which can either fill the dock or withdraw the water in about six hours' time. When the engine is required to empty the dock, the water withdrawn from it can either be discharged into the common sewer, or into the basin, which communicates with the Thames. The engine is situated some hundred yards from the basin, is by Boulton and Watts, and is a beautiful piece of mechanism. The time it takes to empty the dock varies according to the size of the vessel received in it, a large vessel displacing more water than a smaller In the case of the Chichester, which appeared to be of the size of a forty-six gun ship, the time taken was about six hours. There is also upon the top of the engine-house a tank, holding some two hundred tons of water, available in cases of accident, and, in the yard, there are also other wells accessible by pumps supplying fresh water for the use of the dockyard, the latter wells being perfectly unconnected with the dock itself.

one.

The time occupied in these works has extended over something more