currents over a bare wire on poles a distance of more than a hundred miles, the directors and engineers have come round to his view of the matter, and alternating currents have been employed, at all events for the Buffalo line, and also for the chief supply of the industrial city.  Continuous currents, flowing always in the same direction, like the current of a battery, can, it is true, be stored in accumulators, but they cannot be converted to higher or lower pressure in a transformer.  Alternating currents, on the other hand, which see-saw in direction many times a second, cannot be stored in accumulators, but they can be sent at high pressure along a very fine wire, and then converted to higher or lower pressures where they are wanted, and even to continuous currents.  Each kind, therefore, has its peculiar advantages, and both will be employed to some extent.

With regard to the engineering works, the hydraulic tunnel starts from the bank of the river where it is navigable, at a point a mile and a half above the Falls, and after keeping by the shore, it cuts across the bend beneath the city of Niagara Falls, and terminates below the Suspension Bridge under the Falls at the level of the water.  It is 6700 yards long, and of a horseshoe section, 19 feet wide by 21 feet high.  It has been cut 160 feet below the surface through the limestone and shale, but is arched with brick, having rubble above, and at the outfall is lined on the invert or under side with iron.  The gradient is 36 feet in the mile, and the total fall is 205 feet, of which 140 feet are available for use.  The capacity of the tunnel is 100,000 horse-power.  In the lands of the company it is 400 feet from the margin of the river, to which it is connected by a canal, which is over 1500 feet long, 500 feet wide at the mouth, and 12 feet deep.

Out of this canal, head-races fitted with sluices conduct the water to a number of wheel-pits 160 feet deep, which have been dug near the edge of the canal, and communicate below with the tunnel.  At the bottom of each wheel-pit a 5000 horse-power Girard double turbine is mounted on a vertical shaft, which drives a propeller shaft rising to the surface of the ground; a dynamo of 5000 horse-power is fixed on the top of this shaft, and so driven by it.  The upward pressure of the water is ingeniously contrived to relieve the foundation of the weight of the turbine shaft and dynamo.  Twenty of these turbines, which are made by the I. P. Morris Company of Philadelphia, from the designs of Messrs. Faesch and Piccard, will be required to utilize the full capacity of the tunnel.