238 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



ride the other ten. Besides these through trains, special 

 trains could run on occasions when numbers of people 

 wanted to go to one spot, such as sheep or cattle fairs and 

 great markets. Large tracts of country look to one town 

 as their central place, not by any means always the nearest 

 market town ; to such places, for instance, as Gloucester 

 and Reading, thousands resort in the course of the year 

 from hamlets at a considerable distance. Such road 

 trains as have been described would naturally converge 

 on provincial towns of this kind, and bring them thrice 

 their present trade. Country people only want facilities 

 to travel exactly like city people. It is, indeed, quite 

 possible that when villages thus become accessible many 

 moderately well-to-do people will choose them for their 

 residence, in preference to large towns, for health and 

 cheapness. If any number of such persons took up their 

 residence in villages, the advantage to farmers would of 

 course be that they would have good customers for all 

 minor produce at their doors. It is not too much to say 

 that three parts of England are quite as much in need 

 of opening up as the backwoods of America. When a new 

 railroad track is pushed over prairie and through prime- 

 val woods, settlements spring up beside it. When road 

 trains run through remote hamlets those remote hamlets 

 will awake to a new life. 



Many country towns of recent years have made 

 superhuman efforts to get the railway to their doors. 

 Some have succeeded, some are still trying ; in no case 

 has it been accomplished without an immense expendi- 

 ture, and for the most part these railroad branches are 

 completely in the control of the main line with which 

 they are connected. In one or two cases progress has 

 been effected by means of tramways, notably one at 

 Wantage — an excellent idea and highly to be commended. 



