1876.] OF THE SENATE. 455

plan of canals is the same now that it was a hundred years
ago. No thought of improvement, and but scant and insuffi-
cient addition to the established system of construction, seems
to have awakened the engineering mind. Up to the present
day, inventive enterprise has found small space in this de-
partment of practical improvement. Engineers for centuries
have accepted with blind and unenquiring faith, a finished
system, handed down from remote antiquity. Time seems to
have but sanctified its errors, and even to have attached the
profession to its costly and manifold inconveniences.

An earnest and a long study of many years, has disclosed
to yoar memorialist the leading and prominent defects of this
venerable system ; and he claims to have found efficient rem-
edies and improvements, in a new method of canal construc-
tion ; which he seeks to patent He also claims that this
new method may be applied to improvement of canals now
in operation ; and that increase of depth and width may be
given their navigation, without digging out the bottom of
the levels, or taking up the locks and blasting deeper their
foundations, or lowering the crown of their culverts.

Your memorialist claims, that under this new method, the
Chesapeake and Ohio Canal may be fitted for boats of
300 tens capacity; that the errors of its original construction
may be effectually repaired and amended, and its navigation
may be secured from the interruptions of all future inunda-
tion of flood. He furthermore claims that there will be
ample supply of water provided for its navigation at all sea-
sons, even of greatest drouth, and that all these results can
be achieved with hut little stoppage of navigation, and in a
single year, and at half the cost, that similar results can be
accomplished on any other plan known to the science of en-
gineering.

In support of these large pretensions, and that your Hon-
orable Body may know that these claims of eminent useful-
ness are not vain and idle speculation, your memorialist here-
with presents the recorded judgment of scientific and practi-
cal engineers, well known to the people of Maryland, and
whose professional fame, based upon the successful execution
of the grandest works of the age, is appreciated throughout
the United States. He hopes that such high testimonial of
merit may induce the action on the part of the Legislature,
necessary to the improvement and completion of the Chesa-
peake and Ohio Canal.

Your memorialist will assume as a conceded fact, that if it
be made manifest that the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal can
be perfected in its navigation, so as to have capacity for four
times its present coal tonnage, and also it can be extended to