(The Editor, Progress.)

Progress, Volume IV, Issue 2, 1 December 1908, Page 62

(The Editor, Progress.)

Sir,—ln your issue for July we notice an article on '' Failui es of Ferro Concrete," by a Mr. Lewis. We ask you as a matter of public interest to be good enough to afford equal publicity to our reply herewith. We are quite aware that your influential and widely read journal does not identify itself with the individual opinions of your contributors, and only inadvertently would be the means of giving publicity to a borrowed set of unverified statements casting aspersions on so universally accepted a method of construction as that of reinforced concrete.

Elliott, Maclean & Co. [Our correspondent, with whose request we have complied, is quite correct about our opinions It is generally understood, of course, that the editor of a journal is not responsible for either the opinions of his correspondents or those of the writers he quotes. For our part, we have given space to both sides in the Ferro-Concrete controversy, and with the very best results for FerroConcrete.—Ed.P.]

The tonnage of the world's merchant shipping fleet, according to the latest returns, is 37,554,904. Of this total no less than 31,744,904 tons represents steam shipping, and 17,611,096 tons of the whole is under the British flag.