Note 29a — A LETTER, &c.

An idea of the amount of these cuttings and embankments may be given by the following statement. Every one remembers what our school days taught us, relative to the “Great Pyramid:” the many years it was in building: the multitudes of workmen employed: and the vast sums expended to supply those workmen with merely “garlic and onions.” The excavations of the Liverpool and Manchester railway, would, if put in one lump, have formed a mass larger than that of the “Great Pyramid:” its cubical contents being only 2,983,263 yards; while the excavations for that railway amount (according to its treasurer’s statement) to 3,405,000 cubic yards: or 11,386,899 cubic feet more than the whole mass of the “Great Pyramid.”