74 LOCOMOTION, 



LOCOMOTION. 



Locomotion is a subject that has often engaged the 

 attention of ingenious minds, and since it is recently 

 ascertained that our old modes of shifting from place 

 to place were not the most easy and rapid, but that we 

 may, with the new apparatus, improve our speed three 

 or four fold without additional fatigue, it is quite 

 natural to inquire whether the means of locomotion in 

 common u«e on our gravel ways are not capable also of 

 some improvement. 



The wheel has long been used to diminish the fric- 

 tion occasioned by dragging bodies on the earth, and 

 various are the modifications it has undergone to 

 render it more perfect and free from friction. The 

 greatest obstacle opposed to the action of the common 

 wheel is the unevenness of the road or track on which 

 it operates. To reduce our uneven surface to u level 

 is laborious and expensive ; but it is not a difficult 

 matter to render the most of our roads smooth, so that 

 wheels, and carriages, and teams, and passengers, would 

 suffer far less than they do on our common ways. Our 

 legislature, therefore, a few years since, ventured to 

 pass a law requiring that the felloes of heavy loaded 

 wheels should not be less than five inches in width. 

 This law was not suffered to go into operation : it was 

 to have taken effect two years after its enactment ; but, 

 before that time arrived, a majority of the body were 

 panic struck at the near prospect of a good, smooth 

 road, and probably considered it would prove injurious 

 to health to ride and take the air without a good 

 shaking at the same time ; they therefore repealed the 

 law, and we have been blest, on our common roads, 

 with a most healthy circulation — of the blood — ever 

 since. 



It is wholly impossible to keep roads good while 

 teamers are allowed with narrow wheels to carry six 



