CH. I 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE COACH 



I I 



drawing of a ' Britszka' of 1825 (Fig. 6). This 

 brings us to what is, practically, the present form of 

 the coach, in which the C-springs and leather braces 

 are replaced by the stiffer platform springs. 



• * 



Fig. 6. 



In a general treatise on carriages, the name 

 ' coach' is applied to any vehicle on four wheels 

 with a body more or less closed, but in the present 

 Manual it will be used in the narrower signification 

 of a four-in-hand coach of the type used in England 

 and America. We find the road-coach called in 

 the last century, ' stage- waggon,' 'stage-coach,' and 

 sometimes, in the early part of the present cen- 

 tury, ' drag.' Drag now means a coach for private 

 driving, and the word will be employed in that sense 

 in the following pages, public-coach being used to 

 mean a coach which runs over a regular route at 

 fixed hours, and carries passengers for pay. The 

 term stage-coach was originally applied to a coach 

 which went over a number of stages on the road, 

 and not to a coach which ran only a short distance. 

 As an example of the curious changes of language, 



