STATISTICS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM. 



467 



England may justly feel proud of having been tlie first to open a railway for 

 passenger traffic, which took place in 1825. No other country of Europe has since 

 then expended so large a capital upon the development of its railway system, 

 and nowhere else are locomotives called upon to carry an equal amount of 

 merchandise or a larger number of travellers. On an average every inhabitant 



Fig. 230.— Eail-svay Map. 

 Scale 1 : 7,500,000. 



NORTH 



10^ 



W .of Gr. 



100 Miles, 



of the United Kingdom travels twenty times in each, year by rail, whilst every 

 Frenchman only does so three times. The railways of the British Islands 

 belong to ninety-two distinct companies, but the bulk of them are nevertheless 

 owned by a few powerful ones, such as the Great Western, the North-Western, 

 the Midland, the Great Eastern, the South-Western, the Great Northern, the 



