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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
North- Western Kailway, for supplying the tender with water 
when the engine is running. This ingenious apparatus consists 
of a dip-pipe or scoop attached to the bottom of the tender, 
with its lower end curved forwards, and dipping into the water 
contained in an open trough, lying longitudinally between the 
rails at about the rail level, so as to scoop up the water and 
deliver it into the tender-tank while running. The speed in 
practice at which water is picked up varies from a minimum of 
twenty-two miles per hour. 
By means of this apparatus, the size and dead weight of 
tenders for running a given distance are reduced, as also the time 
required on the journey. It has been in use on the Holyhead 
line since October, 1860, and since that time, about 2,250,000 
gallons have been picked up. Another trough has lately been 
laid down on the Liverpool and Manchester line, and a third 
near Wolverton — the last being intended for the use of the fast 
trains which run between London and Rugby, a distance of 
eighty-two miles, without stopping*. The picking-up apparatus 
was illustrated in the Exhibition by a working model. An 
engine, similar to that exhibited, has run from Holyhead to 
Stafford, a distance of 131 miles, without stopping, in 144 
minutes : being at the average rate of 541 miles an hour. An 
engine of the same class lately brought the mail train from 
Holyhead to London, a distance of 264 miles, being the greatest 
continuous run ever made by one engine. The average speed 
was 42 miles an hour.* 
The Machinery of Agriculture imports a new era in the history 
of mechanical science, and in this uncertain and precarious 
climate it is a desideratum that we should have the means, not 
only of preparing the soil, but we should avail ourselves of every 
favourable opportunity for gathering in the crops, and housing 
them with safety in wet weather. In tracing* the history of our 
agricultural improvements, it will be found that they originated 
with a few distinguished men in the south-eastern parts of 
Scotland, and with the father of English farming, Arthur Young, 
the great breeder, and the most talented of English farmers. 
To these men we owe the first movement in agricultural 
improvements, and from their time up to the present there 
has been steady progress. It would not be too much to say 
that the produce of the soil of this country has been trebled 
within the last century, and the quantity of land reclaimed from 
sterility, and the improvement of that previously cultivated has 
been such as to excite the wonder of the past, and to stimulate 
the exertions of the present generation. Even as late as the 
beginning of the present century, although much had been 
* Vide “ Practical Mechanics’ Journal/’ p. 272. 
