Mercantile

Marine of the world, according to There Lloyd's Register for 1896-7, was 29,880 ve els, with ' a tonnage of 25,614.089, of which 11,329 ve els with a dist tonnage of 13.359,026 were British. No other country Methodist approaches these huge figures, the second on the list METTERNICH, being U.S.A. with 3215 ve els of 2,234,725. The the records for pa enger liners all lie with British ve els, sented though the "St. Paul” and "St. Louis" have done an courts average of over 2c knots an hour between the Minister Needles and Sandy Hook, and the " Furst Bismarck," with the " Normannia, and the " La Touraine " have done leading excellent work on their own runs. Letters are reguthe larly delivered from New York in London by the and " Lucania” in 157 hours, and by the "Camp an i a" in He 1^8. The P. and O. boats have made somewhat tionary similar records for the eastern runs, the "Caledonia'* the having delivered letters from Bombay so as to reach METZ, London in 12J days. The speed of the various small the packet-boats, which ply from the British coasts, is the also very great. and