has been forwarded to us. We know not whether the projectors are aware
that a straight line is no longer necessary, but that the sharpest turns
may now be made on rail-roads by an American invention, lately carried
into effect in the United States with singular success.--The line of
railway will be 112-1/2 miles. Birmingham being between 3 and 400 feet
higher than London, and the intervening ground much broken, the railway
could not be laid down without an inclination in its planes; the rise,
however, will in no case exceed 1 in 330. The highest point of the line is
on the summit of an inclined plane 15 miles long, rising 13-1/3 feet in
each mile, and is 315 feet above the level at Maiden Lane, London; from
which it is distant 31 miles. The termination at Birmingham is 256 feet
higher than the commencement at London. It is intended that there should
be 10 tunnels--one at Primrose Hill half a mile long, one near Watford a
mile long, and one near Kilsby, 78 miles from London, a mile and a quarter
long. The others are each less than a quarter of a mile in length, with
the exception of one, which is a third of a mile long. They will all be 25
feet in height, well lighted, and ought rather to be called galleries than
tunnels. The strata through which the railway is carried, appear generally
to follow in this order from London:

Miles.
London clay and plastic clay 15-1/2
Chalk and chalk flints 18-1/2
Chalk, marl, weald clay, iron sand,
and Oxford clay or clunch clay 20
Great and inferior oolite limestones,
and sandy beds 18
Lias marls, lias limestone or water
lime and shale beds 16
Red marl and new red sandstone 24-1/2