530 Trials of Traction- Engines at WolverJiampto)i. 
afrriculture has introduced steam-locomotives suitable not only 
for roads, but also fit to traverse the fields to be ploughed. 
The attention of engineers and others has been directed to the 
subject, ingenious minds have been at work upon the matter 
afresh, and there are now many forms of locomotives, most of 
which, it is true, are intended for no greater speed than three or 
four miles an hour, but some of which are competent to perform 
from eight to ten miles. 
Whether engines at these greater speeds will be suffered to 
run upon common roads is a question for the Legislature. At 
present they are forbidden to travel more than four miles an 
hour, and it is compulsory that they should be preceded by a 
man bearing a red flag to warn horsemen and others that such 
engines are coming. It is to be presurned that could it be shown 
the introduction of quick-going common-road steamers would 
really be a benefit to the community at large, the restrictions upon 
such steamers would be taken off, and persons who break-in 
horses would not consider their duties completed, nor the horses 
properly broken, until they had been made accustomed to the 
presence of such machines. That horses can be broken so as to 
be utterly regardless of locomotives is well known. Any one 
who has seen their behaviour at the railway stations, where they 
are used for shunting, must know that there they regard the noise 
of a locomotive with absolute indifference. As a matter of fact, 
by the time that Hancock had been running his steam-carriage 
two months upon the New Road, none of the omnibus horses 
paid the slightest attention to it, although at the commencement 
of his running they had frequently shied when he passed them. 
Having made these few preliminary remarks upon part only 
of the history of common-road steam locomotion, and upon its 
present condition and its prospects, we will now proceed to 
report upon the matters more immediately connected with the 
Wolverhampton Show. 
In the Report on the Engines tried at Oxford, the Judges 
alluded to the fact that the Society had left it to the exhibitors 
to determine what should be the dimensions of their engines ; and 
the Judges in their report pointed out that while this was attended 
with the benefit of permitting each exhibitor to fully exercise his 
skill and judgment as to what were the proper dimensions and 
proportions for the nominal power of his engine, it left the cus- 
tomer in this difficulty, that in buying the nominal 4-horse engine 
of A, he might be buying either a larger or a smaller engine than 
the nominal 4-horse engine of B ; and it was shown in the Report 
how the real horse-power, of 33,000 lbs. lifted one foot high, which 
engines could exert, had increased year by year in reference to 
