OF THE FRANKLIN INSTITUTE OF THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA, FOR THE PROMOTION OF THE MECHANIC ARTS. DEVOTED TO MECHANICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE, Civil Engineering, the Arts and Manufactures, AND THE RECORDING OF AMERICAN AND OTHER PATENT INVENTIONS. EDITED BY PROF. JOHN F. FRAZER, Assisted by the Committee on Publications of the Franklin Institute. THIRD SERIES. VOL. XXXIX. WHOLE NO. VOL. LXIX. PHILADELPHIA: PUBLISHED BY THE FRANKLIN INSTITUTE AT THEIR HALL. 1860. JOURNAL OF THE FRANKLIN INSTITUTE OF THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA, FOR THE PROMOTION OF THE MECHANIC ARTS. JANUARY, 1860. CIVIL ENGINEERING. For the Journal of the Franklin Institute. The Bar at the Mouth of the Mississippi River. THE vast importance of this impediment to the trade of one of the greatest commercial thoroughfares in the world, together with the other incalculable evils arising out of the freshets of this river alone, is well calculated to demand from an enlightened people a remedy, which may also be applied to numerous similar obstructions to navigation in other streams that have existed ever since the world began, and will ever exist until the subject shall have received the attention due to it. There is no improvement within the reach of science of the same importance, that has so baffled the research of scientific men as that of rivers and harbors. Still, there is no reason to despair, for "necessity is the mother of invention," and we may look upon the bar at the mouth of the Mississippi, as a near relative to necessity, if not the real parent of some invention that will free the world, not only of bars at the mouths of rivers, but from various other obstructions above, as far as the current will admit of navigation without locks. The invention, in fact, has already been made; but, in a republican government like ours, where a majority of the whole people have to sanction the policies adopted by the government, it is necessary that every subject of so much importance as this, should be thoroughly discussed before any great deviation can be made from the beaten track, VOL. XXXIX.-THIRD SERIES.-No. 1.—JANUARY, 1860. 1 |