236 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 



the case of long journeys, and with some kinds of goods, 

 in order to save the cost of transhipment, it would be 

 possible to transfer the bed of the road truck from its 

 frame on to the frame of the railroad truck, so that the 

 goods, with one loading, might pass direct to London. 

 Our American cousins are quite capable of inventing a 

 transferable truck of this kind. In return, goods loaded 

 in London would never leave the same bottom till un- 

 loaded at the farmyard or in the midst of the village. 

 For all long journeys the rails would probably always 

 remain the great carriers, and the road trains serve as 

 their most valuable feeders. When farmers found it 

 possible to communicate with the cities at reasonable 

 rates, and at reasonable speed, they would be encouraged 

 to put forth fresh efforts, to plant vegetables, to grow 

 fruit, to supplement their larger crops with every species 

 of lesser produce. This, in its turn, would bring new 

 traffic to the lines ; for instead of one or two crops in 

 the year only, there would be three or four requiring 

 carriage. There would be then speedy results of such 

 improved communication. One would be an increased 

 value of land ; the second, an increase in the number of 

 small areas occupied and cultivated ; the third, an in- 

 crease in the rural population. A fourth would be that 

 the incredible amount of money which is now annually 

 transferred to the Continent and America for the 

 purchase of every kind of lesser produce would remain 

 in this country to the multiplication of the accounts at 

 Post Office savings banks. Every one who possibly 

 could would grow or fatten something when he could 

 just put it on a road train, and send it off to market. 



Two through passenger road trains a day, one in 

 each direction, carrying light parcels as well, and travers- 

 ing say forty or fifty miles or less, would probably soon 



