PHILADELPHIA, November 16th, 1858.

The foregoing is a fair exhibit of the wear of rails upon the Pennsylvania Railroad. It is a very satisfactory certificate of the good quality of the rails furnished by the Phoenix and Safe Harbor Works, from whence seven-eighths of all the iron used on this road was obtained.

The durability of the rails furnished from these works, I am gratified to state, has exceeded our expectations.

J. EDGAR THOMSON, President Pennsylvania Railroad Company.

AUSTRIAN RAILWAYS.

A statement of the Austrian railway, Francois-Joseph, appears in the report of the first general meeting of shareholders. The information was supplied by M. Etsel, the engineer. The lines are as follows:-

1. Vienna, Oedenburg, Steimanger to Kanisa, 28 miles. 2. Pragerhoff to Kanisa, 15 miles. 3. Uj, Szony, (Comorn,) Stuhlweissenburg to Ofen, 19 miles. 4. Kanisa to Esseg, 24 miles. 5. Esseg to Semlin, 22 miles. Total, 157 miles. Each inspecting engineer to have from 15 to 20 miles. Engineers of "section" (resident engineers) to have five to superintend directly. An administrative inspector, or "traveling director," is stationed with each inspecting engineer. The state of the staff at the end of 1857, was as follows :-Traveling directors, 13; inspecting engineers, 12; ditto for surveys, 7; ten working "sections," 86; five surveys ditto, 22; total, 140. When the first group is in fair way of construction, the staff will be increased to 180, of whom 36 will belong to the secretary's department. The state of the work is as follows:- From Petau to Kanisa the first lot was contracted for on the 9th of December. Three other lots and the bridge over the Mur, near Callori, followed soon after. The other contracts will be put up for competition very shortly. The company treated with an English house for 650,000 cwt. of rails, at 6 florins 30 kreutzers per cwt.; and they attribute to the Indian war and the late crisis the low price, in spite of which the rails are proved to be of the best quality. They calculate that they have saved two million florins by this favorable bargain. Fifty locomotives are ordered at the government workshops at Vienna, and thirty at Esslingen, at an average rate of 30,500 florins, duty included.

CANAL RECEIPTS AND DISBURSEMENTS.

The comparative statement of receipts and disbursements on account of the Ohio canals for the fiscal year ending November 15th, 1858, do not make a very favorable showing for the State revenues. The receipts and expenditures have been as follows:

The receipts for the fiscal year ending November 15th, 1857, were $330,511 73; disbursements for same time $309,263 35. Net revenue $21,248 38. Decrease in receipts over 1857, $45,210 44. Increase in disbursements over 1857, $73,743 73.

LAKES AND CANALS.

Our Canadian neighbors have, with admirable foresight, accomplished a line of artificial navigation, so as to give a course of nearly 2,500 miles for small steamers or propellers. The capacity of the American lakes for internal navigation is shown in the following table, showing the length and breadth in miles, the depth of each in feet, the elevation of each above the sea level, and the area of each in square miles :

:

The Canadian Government has completed five canals, with a uniform depth of

By means, therefore, of these internal improvements of Canada, vessels drawing ten feet can be taken from Fond du Lac, on Lake Superior, to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a distance of twenty-two hundred miles.

RAILROAD BUILDING IN RUSSIA.

A correspondent of Le Nord under date of St. Petersburg, September 14, 1858, states:-

To-day subscriptions for the bonds of the great railroad company began to come in. There was a crowd; six cashiers were hardly able to count and receive the subscribers' deposits. For each bond, a tenth of the nominal capital, or 50 roubles, must be paid down. As it is expected that the amount subscribed will be much greater than the capital required by the company, it is announced that the deposits for all the bonds not delivered will be restored.

It is said that on this, the first day, seven million roubles' worth of bonds were signed. The subscription is to remain open for ten days, and it is likely that more than one hundred million roubles will be subscribed during that time, for the number of subscribers usually increase during the last days. As the company desires but thirty-five millions, the bonds will evidently command high premiums in the market after the first day. This premium, like that for shares, will be more considerable for the bonds delivered than for the promises to deliver, (promesses d'obligations.)

A large proportion of the sales made to-day were upon speculation. The distribution among the individual proprietors is to be made subsequently. Hence, while the speculator who buys a promise to deliver, confines his speculation to

the premium which he can obtain by a subsequent sale, the holder of a bond entirely free will derive from it a much more considerable profit.

The holder of a promesse d'obligation by freeing it, is allowed a discount of 3 per cent per annum, something like 8 or 9 roubles a bond. By sending it then to Paris, for instance, to negotiate it there, (which is easily done, since the bonds will be indorsed 500 roubles, 2,000 francs, 80 pounds sterling, 536 thalers, and 944 Dutch florins, to facilitate transactions)-by selling there the bond merely at par, with no premium, and having the proceeds put into a draft upon St. Petersburg, the speculator will gain from 5 to 7 per cent, or 25 to 35 roubles. You may therefore expect soon to see in the Paris market bonds delivered at St. Petersburg. On the other hand, it will naturally follow in course of time that the market price of these bonds in Paris will be lower than that which they will command here.

Now that we are speaking of railroads, let me say that the line from St. Petersburg to Peterhof is about to have a branch to Krasnoe-Szelo, the place were the camp of the Imperial Guard is pitched every summer, and where all the reviews take place. There will be no great amount of travel in winter, but in summer there will probably be not a little, without reckoning the employment of the road by the government for the transportation of troops, already a source of revenue to the main line from Peterhof. The grant is made, like that of the Peterhof road, in the name of the Baron Stieglitz.

JOURNAL OF MINING, MANUFACTURES, AND ART.

THE RELATIONS OF SCIENCE TO MODERN CIVILIZATION.

Whatever will best meet the demands of comfort and refinement by increasing the productive power of labor, by diminishing the cost of raw material, by adapting it to the greatest and widest utility, by quickening circulation and facilitating exchange, must necessarily advance civilization.

Let us see if science meets this demand. It has in some way contributed to every valuable process of modern industry. Take for example the single article of cotton; chemistry selects and prepares the soil; geology points out the hidden places of iron, lead, and carbon; chemistry, by the safety lamp, prevents explosions in coal mines, and dictates the most economical process of manufacturing raw materials into machinery; mechanical philosophy directs the construction of the cotton gin, which separates the filaments from the seeds; of the jenny, which spins them into threads; and of the power-loom, which weaves them. The process of bleaching, which formerly required five thousand hours, is now as thoroughly effected in one. The mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms pay tribute of their richest dyes; and the arts of design, engraving, and mechanics combined, tint the new-made fabric at the rate of two thousand yards per hour. Aided by chemistry, machinery metamorphoses the rags into paper, and stamps, with the symbols of thought, fifty newspapers per second.

Thus, in six short months from the planting of the cotton seed, the paper product, covered with news of the latest discoveries, improvements, controversies, hostilities, sentiment, and song, may be vivifying, energizing, and harmonizing the entire mind of the world.

We read our obligations to mathematics in the stupendous structures which span the briny flood of Menai, and the fathomless abyss of Niagara. We have not lost the lesson in the fall of the suspension-bridge of Rochester.

Of the living force which is now absorbed in productive work, nine-tenths are generated in the water-wheel and the engine. Man's puny arm is tasked but for the remaining tenth, necessary to accomplish the present triumphs of industry. Science has shown him that mind is the seat of all power-has taught him division of labor-has enabled him to command and harmonize the powers of antagonistic forces-it has elevated him from the drudge to the superintendent— has raised him from muscular toil to the evermore productive, ennobling, and refining effort of mind. The fabled spear of Holus had not so potent control of the elements, as, in the hand of man, has the lever. He touches it a thousand spindles whirl, and shuttles fly, animated by the transmitted force of gravity. He springs the valve, and the steaming Pegasus whirls his articulated train across the landscape at a speed of fifty miles per hour.

The intelligent observer sees the potency of science in the indispensable utility and elevating influence of every appliance of modern civilization--in the gas, which drives crime from the midnight street-in the supplies of water, which flow through the iron arteries of our towns-in the window, which admits the light, and repels the tempest-in the retort, which reveals the secrets of alchemy-in the crystal edifices which in London, Paris, and New York, rear their princely domes, sacred to industry and art-in the microscope that reveals the complex and symmetrical structure of the animalculi—in the artillery of astronomy, which brings the denizens of infinite space within the sphere of human observation.

Political economy has brought to light those fundamental truths which regulate exchange-has disabused the civilized nations of the idea that individual or national wealth could result only from another's loss-has changed commerce from a source of hostility into a bond of peace.

Modern civilization is vigorous, radiant, all aglow under the genial influence of a universally extended commercial intercourse. Not only are the products of the material world thus brought under the laws of supply and demand, but a commerce of ideas exists to an extent hitherto unknown, vivifying humanity to the remotest parts of the globe.

But how were obtained the stupendous agencies requisite to carry on this gigantic exchange? What has enabled man thus to extend his dominion over the inanimate forces to give them muscles of steel, and doom them to perpetual service? Why, in the last half century, have burst forth such great revolutions in agriculture, manufactures, commerce, literature, and art? How has material and immaterial nature thus suddenly a ten-fold capacity to administer to the convenience, taste, physical and mental well being of man? Whence the authority to appoint the goddess of the tides an omnipresent pilot of the deep-to arrest the thunderbolt in its path--to bid it mount the magic wire-dart athwart the land-plunge beneath the sea, and resume its terrene flight on foreign shores, an universal courier? What, we ask, has enabled the civilized nations of to-day thus to realize results more stupendous, magnificent, glorious, than imagination in its loftiest flights has ever before embodied? We have but to turn to the studies which have occupied the silent thoughts of scientific minds of the last three centuries for an answer.

When man has accumulated facts, and in studying their relations, abandons those speculations which transcend the limits of his capacity; when he places himself in harmony with the forces employed by his Creator, then his inquiries