of express and mail trains, the frequent stopping of the engines to take in a fresh supply of water occasions a considerable loss of time on a long journey, each stoppage for this purpose occupying from ten to fifteen minutes.  To avoid such stoppages, larger tenders have been provided, capable of carrying as much as 2000 gallons of water each.  But as a considerable time is occupied in filling these, a plan has been contrived by Mr. Ramsbottom, the Locomotive Engineer of the London and North-Western Railway, by which the engines are made to feed themselves while running at full speed!  The plan is as follows:—An open trough, about 440 feet long, is laid longitudinally between the rails.  Into this trough, which is filled with water, a dip-pipe or scoop attached to the bottom of the tender of the running train is lowered; and, at a speed of 50 miles an hour, as much as 1070 gallons of water are scooped up in the course of a few minutes.  The first of such troughs was laid down between Chester and Holyhead, to enable the Express Mail to run the distance of 841 miles in two hours and five minutes without stopping; and similar troughs have since been laid down at Bushey near London, at Castlethorpe near Wolverton, and at Parkside near Liverpool.  At these four troughs about 130,000 gallons of water are scooped up daily.

Wherever railways have been made, new towns have sprung up, and old towns and cities been quickened into new life.  When the first English lines were projected, great were the prophecies of disaster to the inhabitants of the districts through which they were proposed to be forced.  Such fears have long since been dispelled in this country.  The same prejudices existed in France.  When the railway from Paris to Marseilles was laid out so as to pass through Lyons, a local prophet predicted that if the line were made the city would be ruined—“Ville traversée, ville perdue;” while a local priest denounced the locomotive and the electric telegraph as heralding the reign of Antichrist.  But such nonsense is no longer uttered.  Now it is the city without the railway that is regarded as the “city lost;” for it is in a measure shut out from the rest of the world, and left outside the pale of civilisation.

Perhaps the most striking of all the illustrations that could be offered of the extent to which railways facilitate the locomotion, the industry, and the subsistence of the population of large towns and cities, is afforded by the working of the railway system in connection with the capital of Great Britain.

The extension of railways to London has been of comparatively recent date; the whole of the lines connecting it with the provinces and terminating at its outskirts, having been opened during the last thirty years, while the lines inside London have for the most part been opened within the last sixteen years.

The first London line was the Greenwich Railway, part of which was opened for traffic to Deptford in February 1836.  The working of this railway was first exhibited as

a show, and the usual attractions were employed to make it “draw.”  A band of musicians in the garb of the Beef-eaters was stationed at the London end, and another band at Deptford.  For cheapness’ sake the Deptford band was shortly superseded by a large barrel-organ, which played in the passengers; but, when the traffic became established, the barrel organ, as well as the beef-eater band at the London end, were both discontinued.  The whole length of the line was lit up at night by a row of lamps on either side like a street, as if to enable the locomotives or the passengers to see their way in the dark; but these lamps also were eventually discontinued as unnecessary.

As a show, the Greenwich Railway proved tolerably successful.  During the first eleven months it carried 456,750 passengers, or an average of about 1300 a-day.  But the railway having been found more convenient to the public than either the river boats or the omnibuses, the number of passengers rapidly increased.  When the Croydon, Brighton, and South-Eastern Railways began to pour their streams of traffic over the Greenwich viaduct, its accommodation was found much too limited; and it was widened from time to time, until now nine lines of railway are laid side by side, over which more than twenty millions of passengers are carried yearly, or an average of about 60,000 a day all the year round.

Since the partial opening of the Greenwich Railway in 1836, a large extent of railways has been constructed in and about the metropolis, and convenient stations have been established almost in the heart of the City.  Sixteen of these stations are within a circle of half a mile radius from the Mansion House, and above three hundred stations

are in actual use within about five miles of Charing Cross.

To accommodate this vast traffic, not fewer than 3600 local trains are run in and out daily, besides 340 trains which depart to and arrive from distant places, north, south, east, and west.  In the morning hours, between 8.30 and 10.30, when business men are proceeding inwards to their offices and counting-houses, and in the afternoon between four and six, when they are returning outwards to their homes, as many as two thousand stoppages are made in the hour, within the metropolitan district, for the purpose of taking up and setting down passengers, while about two miles of railway are covered by the running trains.

One of the remarkable effects of railways has been to extend the residential area of all large towns and cities.  This is especially notable in the case of London.  Before the introduction of railways, the residential area of the metropolis was limited by the time occupied by business men in making the journey outwards and inwards daily; and it was for the most part bounded by Bow on the east, by Hampstead and Highgate on the north, by Paddington and Kensington on the west, and by Clapham and Brixton on the south.  But now that stations have been established near the centre of the city, and places so distant as Waltham, Barnet, Watford, Hanwell, Richmond, Epsom, Croydon, Reigate, and Erith, can be more quickly reached by rail than the old suburban quarters were by omnibus, the metropolis has become extended in all directions along its railway lines, and the population of London, instead of living in the City or its immediate vicinity, as formerly,

have come to occupy a residential area of not less than six hundred square miles!

The number of new towns which have consequently sprung into existence near London within the last twenty years has been very great; towns numbering from ten to twenty thousand inhabitants, which before were but villages,—if, indeed, they existed.  This has especially been the case along the lines south of the Thames, principally in consequence of the termini of those lines being more conveniently situated for city men of business.  Hence the rapid growth of the suburban towns up and down the river, from Richmond and Staines on the west, to Erith and Gravesend on the east, and the hives of population which have settled on the high grounds south of the Thames, in the neighbourhood of Norwood and the Crystal Palace, rapidly spreading over the Surrey Downs, from Wimbledon to Guildford, and from Bromley to Croydon, Epsom, and Dorking.  And now that the towns on the south and south-east coast can be reached by city men in little more time than it takes to travel to Clapham or Bayswater by omnibus, such places have become as it were parts of the great metropolis, and Brighton and Hastings are but the marine suburbs of London.

The improved state