Paris forms a sort of bottle-neck for the united out-
pourings of the Marne, the Yonne and the Seine, for below Paris, those serpentine bendings and writhings of the Seine, which everyone who has ever flown from London to Paris must have noticed, hold up the water to a sur- prising extent. In the Manchester Guardian's • phrase, "they keep the stream bumping about from bank to bank like a drunken man in a narrow walled lane, instead of sliding with unbroken momentum down its bed:" The remedy for all this is very difficult to find. The Manchester Guardian has the authority of Professor L. W. Lydc—an authority said to be unsurpassed—for its opinion that "Paris could be permanently set at ease only by diverting the Yonne, which is the chief offender, bodily into the Loire. But in the present state of France's finances it would be an alarming undertaking. We see as yet no practicable means of complete escape from this ancient trouble, and can only hope that some plan of which nobody else has yet thought may now be taking shape in the mind of sonic Member of the magnificent French school -of civil engineers.'
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