Mr. Froideville’s project presents the further advantage of rendering it easier to put the port of Havre quickly in defense.  A certain number of floating batteries, anchored behind the breakwaters and protecting the advances of torpedo boats by means of their firing, would make a formidable defense.  Not having to perform any evolutions, they might without danger be invested with armor plate thicker than that of ordinary ironclads.  In order to complete the system, there might be erected upon the Eclat shoal an ironclad fort like that which defends the entrance of Portsmouth.

An English chronicler of the fourteenth century, in speaking of his country, places it above all others, and declares that men are handsomer, whiter, and purer blooded there than elsewhere, and he says that this is so “because it is so.”  We would not like to imitate his naive reasoning, and yet, for defending the very original system proposed by Mr. Froideville, we have only our conviction, which we share, moreover, with a large number of sea-faring men and engineers.  Mathematics are powerless to predict to us with accuracy the manner in which the floating breakwaters will behave, but experiment remains.  Let the promoter of the project, then, be given authority to inclose a few hundred meters, and if, as we suppose, the breakwaters shall remain immovable in a northwester, a maritime revolution will have been brought about.—­La Nature.

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IMPROVED CATCH BASIN.

In 1882, M. Bacle published in Le Genie Civil a study of the sewer systems in some of the large foreign cities.  There may be found there a description of the Liernur system at Amsterdam, Leyden, and Dordrecht, in Holland, and in certain cities of Germany and the United States.

[Illustration:  IMPROVED CATCH BASIN.]

This system consists in the employment of two distinct systems of ducts, one for the discharges from water-closets and the other for household wastes, rain water, and the discharges from factories when sufficiently purified.  This arrangement allows the employment of sewers of small section, provided that it shall be unnecessary to enter them for the purpose of cleansing them.  It has been necessary, therefore, to provide inlets with a separating apparatus called “gully” or “catch basin,” which retains as completely as possible all solid matter, mud, excrement, and debris of every kind which maybe floated in by street washing or by rain-water, and which may be capable of causing stoppages in the sewers, the choking up being followed by fermentation and the emanation of noxious vapors.

M.C.  Pieper of Berlin suggests a device for a catch basin, which appears to meet the requirements.  It is in the form of a cylindrical metal box, enlarged in its upper section to receive a filtering cylinder of perforated sheet iron, which occupies almost the upper half of the device and rests upon the smaller lower part.  The entire apparatus is covered by a movable funnel, through which enter water and any rubbish which it may carry with it.  From one side a tube allows the liquid to be discharged, while a siphon placed on the opposite side serves the same purpose under certain circumstances, as will be explained.