AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 109 



on board railroad trains, and whatever else, and carry them 

 over the river, thus leaving large spaces of river for boats and 

 ships to pass. 



We call your attention to an American invention which has 

 attracted the attention of London and Paris; I mean the elevated 

 railway of John Randel, Jr., one of our most accurate engineers. 

 His plan has the approval of the celebrated engineer of England, 

 Brunei, who proposes to make the Eelt railway all around Lon- 

 don at a cost of one hundred and fifty millions of dollars. And 

 he is followed by most eminent French engineers, who propose a 

 like splendid belt railway for Paris. Mr. Randel was selected 

 by the distinguished commissioners, Clinton, Rutherford and 

 another, to lay out the island of New-York into its streets and 

 avenues. He did it with such mathematical exactness as to defy an 

 error of half an inch in ten miles. He also insisted upon a plan 

 which would save tliis city from entire destruction by fire. He 

 demanded avenues and cross streets at frequent spaces so wide 

 that fire could not cross them. He could not obtain as many as he 

 wished, because owners of land to be taken annoyed him exces- 

 sively in the progress of his survey, on account of the great space 

 taken for tliese^re arrestors. 



You behold in the machinery department a very valuable novelty 

 in motive power. The ignition engine invented by Dr. Alfred 

 Drake, of Philadelphia. It is twenty horse power. The motive 

 power is coal or other gas, mixed with nine or ten times its hulk 

 of atmospheric air, confined in the cylinder, and there ignited, 

 and then exerting great pressure. It uses fuel in a gaseous state, 

 and has no separate heater, furnace, or smoke pipe or boiler. The 

 economy of it will be great, for it requires about one-twelfth part 

 of the space for its fuel that is now necessary for the stowage of 

 coal; and there is no danger from explosion or from fire, either 

 accidental or from the spontaneous combustion of its fuel. The 

 great saving of space for fuel will enable it to run rail cars or 

 vessels long distances without further supplies. 



Wliy should I attempt to describe the rich oftering of our free 

 people now in the Crystal Palace. They exalt us; they fill us 

 with lawful pride; they constitute the ten talents which we have 

 of those the Lord gave us. He bid us leave the old world and 

 every thing but our Bible behind us. We put on one of our first 

 shiedls, our faith in his support. We said, " Qui transtulit sus- 

 tinetP He xoho transplanted iis sustains us. He appointed this 

 continent for our garden, and we are to till it. 



