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The projectors of the Great Eastern Steamship Company having failed in their efforts to raise the amount (upwards of a million of dollars), to complete this monster, suggest two alternatives, the first being to raise. the necessary amount of capital by an issue of preference shares, and the second to promote the formation of a new company, to whom the lhip may be sold to pay the debts (amounting to upwards of $320,000), now pressing upon her, and to raise the additional sum to fit her for sea. The New York Evenino Post asserts that in the present discouraging state of the shipping trade, she woull, if finished, have to wait six montba at Lh-erpool to fill up, and still longer at her plac" of destination to discharge and reload. Shippers would not wait the slow movements of such an ark, when they could lend conveniently, and on as favorable terms, every week by the smaller liners. Suspicions of this kind have been gradually forcing themseln8 upon the minds of the stockholders, we presnme, indisposing them to risk any more good money after bad. Hence their refusal to come forward and make up the funds necessary to finish the work so bravely begun, or even protect the credit of the company. When thi. grand conception of mechanical genius was first commenced, the enthusiasts of the press, both in this country and England, asserted, as they have of many other gigantio' enterprises, that her completion would inaugurate a system that must benefit every man, womau and child in the universe and produce a revolution in ship-building. How lame and impotent is the conclwion! After yean spent in her construction ; after expending we know not how much in building her hull; after exhausting the mechanical science of the world in launchiug her ; and after keeping the world vexed for we know now how long, with the questions where she was to run to, and what harbor was big enough to hold her, it turns out at last that this ship, which was to be to other ships what the Grand Man in the New Church theology is to other men, has exhausted the funds and credit of the company, and that her owners are heartily sorry that they did not apply their capital to some other objeet more remunerative than she is likely to prove. NBW OVERSHOE.—It is stated that a citizen of Utica, N. Y., has invented a new kind of overshoe, designed for persons traveliug by sea and land. It is made of braided straw. Straw being: a non-conductor of heat, the Batural warmth of the foot is retamed, without being subject to dampness by the foot sweating—an advantage of great importance —the straw teing porous, and either absorbing the dampness or allomg it to pass off. THE TIXEOKAPH PLATEAU.—Our readers will find a map of this, and the connections of the AUantie Cable in Europe and America, together with much .interesting matter appertaining thereto, on page 216, Vol. Xll, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN.
