232 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



whose political integrity is precarious ; and we have, in the degree to 

 which additional defensive resources are needed, the first element of 

 individualization according to geographical conditions. 



The shape and extension, though the most obvious, constitute only- 

 one of the features in which the railroad system is affected by geo- 

 graphical conditions. Regarding the lines in the mercantile aspect, 

 we find that the relative importance of their freight and passenger 

 trafiic is likewise subject to such influences. While in Germany freight 

 is the all-important element in estimating the value of the business 

 done by the railroads, and it would be thought folly to depend chiefly 

 on the receipts from passengers, this is not the case in all countries. 

 Herr von Weber gives a table of the relative value of the passenger 

 and freight business of six countries, from which the results are de- 

 duced that in Austria it is as 1 to 4 ; in Russia, as 1 to 3*2 ; in Prus- 

 sia, as 1 to 2"7 ; in England, as 1 to 1*3 ; in Italy, as 1 to 0*9 ; and in 

 Denmark, as 1 to 0"5. In the first three countries here named, the 

 excess is very largely in favor of the freight trafiic ; in England, the 

 values of the two kinds are more nearly equal, while in Italy and Den- 

 mark the excess is on the side of the passenger traffic. The first three 

 countries are continental, the last three are maritime. Where there are 

 abundant water-ways to compete with the railroads, the freight, which 

 seeks the easiest routes, goes to them, and the railroads have to rely 

 more largely upon passengers ; where water-ways are more rare, as on 

 the great Continental plains, the freight is of necessity carried on the 

 railroads, and they find in it the source of their most lucrative business, 

 by the side of which the passenger traffic may sink into relative insig- 

 nificance. 



With equal acumen Herr von Weber has remarked a differentiation 

 in conformity to geographical diversities in the means and apparatus 

 which railroads employ in the performance of their work. At first 

 sight it would appear that the wagons in which the goods are carried, 

 which to-day are found on the Atlantic coast and in a few days more 

 are removed to the borders of Asia, which in going scale Alpine ridges, 

 and 'are before long to be returned to the ocean on routes passing 

 through and under the mountains by tunnels, should be of uniform 

 construction, Herr von Weber divides the equipment and appur- 

 tenances of a railway line into two groups, the first of which includes 

 those articles that are stationary or which circulate only within a lim- 

 ited area, and the second those that are liable to be moved over the 

 whole circuit of an extensive and complicated system. To the former 

 class, of fixed elements, he assigns the road-bed and superstructure 

 and all their accessories ; to the other class, or that of movable prop- 

 erties, belong the wagons. Between the two classes are the locomo- 

 tives, which only rarely go outside of the particular system to which 

 they belong, " While the fixed organs," he says, " answer their pur- 

 poses the more completely the more exactly they are adapted in indi- 



