MAGAZINE OF SCIENCE AND ART. 
15 
active competition. The subject of the first 
gold medal is highly important in a young 
country, where it is so desirable that the 
first steps taken should be well grounded, 
and worthy of imitation. 
REPORT. 
Your Committee considered that the enquiry delegated 
to them by the general body should, in the first place, be 
directed to the specific objects for which such awards 
should be offered. 
Raving considered the various objects for which they 
might with propriety be appropriated, it appeared to them 
that among the first in importance were plans and models 
fur the construction of dwellings for the industrial classes. 
They apportioned the second place to the production of a 
work of art. 
They then proceeded to consider the details and con¬ 
ditions which should bo imposed on competitors, to enable 
tlie relative merits of the various plans to be compared. 
For the plans and models of buildings they recommend 
that two prizes be offered— the first consisting of a gold 
medal, and the second of a silver medal. 
The gold medal should be awarded to the best plan, 
accompanied hv a model of a building or block of build¬ 
ings ; a sjiecification and estimate of expense (the economy 
of which will be a desideratum) should also be required. 
They recommend also that the prize plan should be ad¬ 
judged with relation to the materials already existing in 
the colony, to its beauty of design and to the convenience 
of its provisions for ventilation and drainage. Urban 
buildings should have the preference, though residences 
adapted to the country districts should be allowed to enter 
into competition. 
The silver medal should he appropriated to the best 
plan of a building of h, similar description to the fore¬ 
going, but the plan may be unaccompanied by the medal 
or the specification and estimate. 
"With regard to the competition in art, they recommend 
that a gold medal should be awarded to the best original 
work of art in either of the following branches, viz.— 
Painting, drawing, sculpture, engraving in wood, steel, or 
copper, or the process of lithography. The committee 
recommend that there should be no restriction imposed on 
the competitors, cither in material, size, or style of the 
work of ait exhibited, with the exception that architectu¬ 
ral or engineering designs should be ineligible. 
They also recommend that a silver medal should bo 
awarded for the best copy of a standard work of art, in 
either of the branches of art above specified. 
They recommend that competitors should he required 
to declare that any work offered by them shall have been 
executed since the publication of the advertisements call¬ 
ing for competition. 
That each design should he accompanied by a motto, 
and tli at no names of competitors be allowed to transpire 
previous to the declaration of the prize. That the designs 
should be sent in on or before the 1st of September, and 
that the final award of the judges should he made at some 
public ceremony, to take place about the second week in 
October. The*judges t6 be nominated by the general 
committee, and not to be less than three or more than five 
in number. 
BOYDELL’S PATENT ENDLESS 
RAILWAY.—THE MEGzETHON. 
At the present time when the public mind 
is most anxiously directed to the wretched 
condition of the roads of the colony, and 
when even the streets of the metropolitan 
city are in a state of dangerous decay, it is 
very desirable to investigate the appliances 
Vhich ingenious scientific men have devised 
for overcoming the difficulties of locomotion 
under such circumstances. The arrival in 
this colony of a locomotive steam engine, 
which carried its own railway with it, 
created, therefore, a great amount of excite¬ 
ment, and for some weeks past the name of 
the “ Megaethon” has been almost a ‘‘house¬ 
hold world.” In order to give our distant 
readers some idea of this machine, we have 
had the most striking feature (that is the 
endless railway) engraved, and we extract 
the following description from the London 
Mechanics* Magazine. 
Mr. Boy dell has brought forward an invention which 
excited considerrblo attention at the recent Carlisle 
meeting of the Royal Agricultural Society in England. 
It consists in attaching to the wheels of a vehicle a 
number of shoes or sleepers, on which are fixed short 
lengths of iron rail, so that as the vehicle advances, these 
portions of rail are successively brought beneath the 
wheel, and thus virtually form an endless railway on 
which the carriage runs, the connection betweon the wheel 
and each shoe or sleeper being of such a character, that 
the action is the same as if the two were altogether inde¬ 
pendent of each other, for the time that the wheel is 
traversing the rail. The length of the shoes or sleepers 
of course depends upon the size of the wheel, and tho 
number of them is generally about five to each wheel. 
It is plain, that veliicles fitted with this endless railway 
can only be used where slow motion alone is requisite, for 
where the velocity acquired very considerable, the cen¬ 
trifugal force applied to the parts of the railway would 
produce certain derangement. This circumstance, how¬ 
ever, does not affect the utility of the invention as 
applied to ^ agricultural purposes, or to many other 
operations in which a greater rate (ban four or five miles 
an hour is not requisite. 
Mr. Boydell’s attention has not, it should be stated, 
been confined to the simple principle of connecting to the 
wheel an endless railway, but rather to the method of 
applying this principle, so as to obtain a practicable and 
efficient arrangement to the parts. Tho method adopted 
by him will be understood from the accompanying en¬ 
graving and the following description, the latter being 
taken from the Mark-lmc Express ^: 
“ A strong bar of iron is bent into the form of a very 
sharp pointed or Gothic arch, and bolted to the sleeper 
with four strong bolts. At the top of the arch or bar will 
be observed a strong pivot, analogous to that of the beam 
of a larger balance. This bar works in a strong iron 
box, curved at the top, and haying a groove at each side 
of the curve in which tins pivot works when raising or 
lowering the railway from and to the ground. The curve 
of the two sides of the aTcli is cycloidal, always cor¬ 
responding to the diameter of the wheel; in other words, 
the curve which each side of the bent bar forms, supposing 
it a line, is an arch of a cycloid formed by a point in the 
