STEAM ON COUNTRY ROADS. 233 
to their homes. In itself this is a valuable result. But 
now suppose our enterprising farmer has the fortune to. 
have a good season, and to see his twenty acres teeming 
with produce. He sets as many hands on as possible to 
get it in; but now what is he to do with it? Send it to 
London. That is easily said; but trace the process 
through. The goods, perishable and delicate, must first 
be carted to the railway station and delivered there, 
eight miles from the farm, at most inconvenient hours. 
They must be loaded into slow goods trains, which may 
not reach town for four-and-twenty hours. There is not 
the slightest effort to accelerate the transit, and the rates 
are high. By the time the produce reaches the market 
its gloss and value are diminished, and the cost of tran- 
sit has eaten away the profit. The thing has been tried 
over and over again and demonstrated. One need only 
go to the nearest greengrocer’s to obtain practical proof 
of it. The apples he sells are American. The farmers 
in New York State or Massachusetts can grow apples, 
pack them in barrels, despatch them two thousand eight 
hundred milcs to Liverpool, and they can then be scat- 
tered all over the country and still sold cheaper than the 
fruit from English orchards. This is an extraordinary 
fact, showing the absolute necd of speedy and cheap 
transit to the English farmer if he is to rise again. Of 
what value is his proximity to the largest city in the 
world—of what value is it that he is only ninety miles 
from London, if it costs him more to send his apples 
about ninety miles than it does his American kinsman 
very nearly three thousand ? 
As we have in this country no great natural water- 
ways like the rivers and lakes of the United States, our 
best resource is evidently to be found in the development 
of the excellent common roads which traverse the 
