290,000 square miles, the volume of water in the Niagara River passing over the cataract every second is something like 300,000 cubic feet; and this, with a fall of 276 feet from the head of the upper rapids to the whirlpool rapids below, is equivalent to about nine million, or, allowing for waste in the turbines, say, seven million horse-power.  Moreover, the great lakes discharging—­into each other form a chain of immense reservoirs, and the level of the river being little affected by flood or drought, the supply of pure water is practically constant all the year round.  Mr. R. C. Reid has shown that a rainfall of three inches in twenty-four hours over the basin of Lake Superior would take ninety days to run off into Lake Huron, which, with Lake Michigan, would take as long to overflow into Lake Erie; and, therefore, six months would elapse before the full effect of the flood was expended at the Falls.

The first outcome of the movement was the Niagara River Hydraulic Power and Sewer Company, incorporated in 1886, and succeeded by the Niagara Falls Power Company.  The old plan of utilising the water by means of an open canal was unsuited to the circumstances, and the company adopted that of the late Mr. Thomas Evershed, divisional engineer of the New York State Canals.  Like the other, it consists in tapping the river above the Falls, and using the pressure of the water to drive the number of turbines, then restoring the water to the river below the Falls; but instead of a surface canal, the tail-race is a hydraulic tunnel or underground conduit.  To this end some fifteen hundred acres of spare land, having a frontage just above the upper rapids, was quietly secured at the low price of three hundred dollars an acre; and we believe its rise in value owing to the progress of the works is such that a yearly rental of two hundred dollars an acre can even now be got for it.  This land has been laid out as an industrial city, with a residential quarter for the operatives, wharves along the river, and sidings or short lines to connect with the trunk railways.  In carrying out their purpose the company has budded and branched into other companies—­one for the purchase of the land; another for making the railways; and a third, the Cataract Construction Company, which is charged with the carrying out of the engineering works, for the utilisation of the water-power, and is therefore the most important of all.  A subsidiary company has also been formed to transmit by electricity a portion of the available power to the city of Buffalo, at the head of the Niagara River, on Lake Erie, some twenty miles distant.  All these affiliated bodies are, however, under the directorate of the Cataract Construction Company; and amongst those who have taken the most active part in the work we may mention the president, Mr. E. D. Adams; Professor Coleman Sellers, the consulting engineer; and Professor George Forbes, F. R. S., the consulting electrical engineer, a son of the late Principal Forbes of Edinburgh.