LYON or LYONS. This most important French town is very advantageously situated on the line of railway from Paris to Marseille, now in course of construction, and on two navigable rivers the Rhone and the Saone, in the fork between which the greater part of the town is built.
Lyon is a flourishing manufacturing town. The staple articles of industrial produce are silk stuffs of all descriptions, which for solidity of texture, richness and permanence of dye, and beauty of design, are not equalled else where. In this manufacture about 100,000 of the population are directly or indirectly con cerned. Cashmero and silk shawls, ribands, cotton cloth, hosiery, hats, printed calico, jewellery, liqueurs, chemical products, gold. and silver lace, crapes, tulle, glue, sheet lead, musical strings, ornamental paper, Bze., are also made. There are, besides, numerous; printing establishments, dye-houses, metal foundries, glass works, potteries, tan-yards, breweries, boat building yards, (to.
Lyon is also, from its advantageous position, a place of great commerce. The products imported into the town, for its own consump tion, or for re-exportation, are wine, brandy, oil, hemp, flax, soap, rice, chestnuts, salt, raw cotton, coffee, indigo, sulphur, lead, teazels, madder and other dye-stuffs, &c. Timber, firewood, building stone, and asphalte are the chief articles brought down the Rhone to this city. Down the Saone are brought timber of all kinds, oak staves, fire wood, charcoal, tan ning bark, iron and iron ore, gypsum, hay, straw, corn, building stone, bricks, tiles, &c. Steamers ply on the Satin° to Ch&lon-sur Same, and on the Rhone to Avignon and Arles. The town has communication with the Rhine by the Canal du-Rhone-au-Rhin ; and with Paris by the SaOne and the canal'