14 0. O. BURGE. 



14,000,000 annual train miles of shunting, was incurred to 

 clear the line for expresses. Hence we may expect to see, 

 as the first development, the establishment of special lines, 

 more or less parallel to the existing main ones, for fast 

 traffic only, worked by the latest electrical methods. As 

 to suburban traffic, the nature of the new means of power, 

 points to the adoption of uniform short intervals between 

 trains, all day, the variation in traffic being met by increas- 

 ing and diminishing the number of cars in each of the trains 

 rather than their frequency, most of the cars being self- 

 propelling. The enormous amount of the rolling stock, 

 which would be rendered useless by the change to electricity 

 is certain to be a great obstacle to it, and as this will make 

 the change gradual, the evils of piecemeal installation can 

 hardly be avoided. 



It may not be generally known that, as far back as in 

 the book of Job, Ohap. xxxviii., v. 35, we have an allusion 

 to wireless telegraphy. This is now, after so many ages, 

 an accomplished fact, but there are also now promises of 

 the most wonderful character, through the investigations 

 of Tesla and others, as to the transmission, by electricity 

 without wires, of power, the possibilities of which it is 

 difficult to foresee. That, by the mysterious power of an 

 intangible and invisible agency, great machinery, thousands 

 of miles away, can be driven without visible connexion, is 

 stimulating to the imagination in the highest degree. We 

 seem to be peeping into the coming wireless age, when 

 man will be, more and more, Lord of the Creation, and 

 when the vassals of his intellect will come, at his beck and 

 call, to provide for wants and comforts, hitherto either 

 unknown, or furnished by the bodily toil of his fellow man. 



Next, it is almost certain that the adoption of wide and 

 straight streets in large cities, will be a work of the future, 

 even at the cost of much reconstruction, so as to enable 



