CLYDE. Below Glasgow the Clyde has been made the scene of astonishing engineer ; ing works. About 80 years ago, only vessels of 3i feet draught could come up to Glasgow Bridge ; in 1775 the whole river from Glasgow to Dumbarton was deepened so as to receive vessels of 6 feet draught: this depth was in creased by 1831 to 131 feet; by 1847 to 15 feet ; and works now in progress will carry I the depth to 20 feet at neap tides. The river for 12 nulel is being widened, straightened and deepened.
A suggestion of a singular kind has been re cently thrown out, in the pages of the Glasgow Advertiser, concerning the forthcoming Indus trial Exhibition. "There is at the present day in Glasgow, we believe, in the hands of Messrs. Claud, Girdwood, and Co., or their successors, the very identical steam-engine that Henry Bell fitted on board the Comet, the first steamer that ever sailed on the Clyde --the vessel, in fact, which may be called the precursor of the splendid steamers that now circumnavigate the globe, and bring the anti podes, as it were, to our very threshold. This
steam-engine has on several occasions been exhibited in Glasgow, and has always been an object of much attraction, as properly it should be, to those who know the value of such a wonderful invention as that of the marine steam-engine. Mr. John Wood, of Port Glasgow, the veteran ship-builder who laid the keel of the first passsage steamer that navi gated the Clyde—the father of all the won derful steamships that now exist—posse's:3es the draft, and, if required, could even at the present day produce an exact counterpart of the Comet. Now, what we would propose as a source of attraction at the Exhibition of 1851, is that an exact duplicate of the Comet, should be built by Mr. Wood, and that it should be fitted with the original steam-engine of that vessel, so as to present an exact coun terpart to that eventful steamer as she sailed on the river Clyde in the year 1812. The expense of such an undertaking would be a mere baga telle."