238 FIELD AND HEDGEROW., 
ride the other ten. Besides these through trains, spccial 
trains could run on occasions when numbers of people 
wanted to go to one spot, such as sheep or cattle fairs and 
great markets. Large tracts of country look to one town 
as their central place, not by any means always the nearest 
market town ; to such places, for instance, as Gloucester 
and Reading, thousands resort in the course of the year 
from hamlets at a considerable distance’ Such road 
trains as have been described would naturally converge 
on provincial towns of this kind, and bring them thrice 
their present trade. Country people only want facilities 
to travel exactly like city people. It is, indeed, quite 
possible that when villages thus become accessible many 
moderately well-to-do people will choose them for their 
residence, in preference to large towns, for health and 
cheapness. If any number of such persons took up their 
residence in villages, the advantage to farmers would of 
course be that they would have good customers for all 
minor produce at their doors. It is not too much to say 
that three parts of England are quite as much in need 
of opening up as the backwoods of America. Whena new 
railroad track is pushed over prairie and through prime- 
val woods, settlements spring up beside it. When road 
trains run through remote hamlets those remote hamlets 
will awake to a new life. 
Many country towns of recent years have made 
superhuman cfforts to gct the railway to their doors. 
Some have succeeded, some are still trying ; in no case 
has it been accomplished without an immense expendi- 
ture, and for the most part these railroad branches are 
completely in the control of the main line with which 
they are connected. In one or two cases progress has 
been effected by mcans of tramways, notably one at 
Wantage—an excellent idca and highly tobe commended. 
