New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1857-07-16

made very good time through the air when be-
strobe by Rogero or AstOlpho But all these le-
gends did but typify what prophets and kings like
Eu,ipdes and Ariosto desired to see, but died
without the sight, and which is all vulgar common
place to US. For il we wish to transport ourselves
from enasf the continent to the other, We have
nothing to d ut to put ourselves into magic car
to which an enchanted horse is harnessed, more
strangely wonderful than dragon or griffin, though
breathing fire and smoke like them, which whisks
us away through the air with an utter scorn OF the
obstacles Of time and space, of rivers or Of noun
tans, and sets down at our journeys end, for all
the world as if it had done nothing out OF the
common course. And we are so used to this mira.
Gle Of every day that scarcely stop to think what
an astoDishment it really is
The modern dragon, however, which we have
tanned and broken to draw our charOts for US,
resemble, its il.reputed prototype of former times
in another particular beside those of flying through
the cir and breathing fire aud smoke. 1t has, Like
that ill-reguated monster, prodigious appetite,
and consumes very great quantities Of food. For.
tuDately, it does not devour men and ocks (though
it occasionally kills and mains them in It's savage
sporty, but is strictly Vegetarian in its dietetic
habits. 1t is not true Of our dragon, as it was OF
the Dragon of Wantley, that
Houses and Churches
Were 10 him but geese and turksyss'
but groves and forests he devours up with eager
and indiscrimlnate hunger. A tall pine, I" fit for
"the mast Of some huge admiral" is but break.
fast to him, and Birnam Wood would be crunched
up and swallowed in the course of half dozen
dinners. The devastation which the NAV Of these
hungry Though useful monsters is making among
our woods and forests, the way in which they are
the face of the earth has awakened very reasonable
concern for the consequences. The marketing for
one of them cannot be done at anything like the
figure Of former times, which circumstance, BY in
creating the cost of his keep, necessarily makes
his labor more expensive and less extensively USE
fDl-beside the fearful looking for Of the time
whtn he may give up his fiery ghost from mere
inanton and the lack of food, and reduce US to the
ancient slowness of mere steeds of flesh and blood.
Happily, however, there is q resource to which
we may recur, and will, as soon as necessity drives
US to it, as she is now doing with memorable ur-
gency. After the fiery dragon has browsed his ill
upon our forest pines, and cropped them down
level with the earth, there yet remain stored away
in her recesses ineXhaustbe quantities Of yegeta.
BILE focd grasses and FERNS aud trees already cooked
by fires which went out millions Of years ago, easy
of mastication ard digestion, and of power to re-
cruit his strength and plume afresh the wings Of
fame on which he flies upon his path. To dis
mount from our allegsry before it gets as "head-
strong as those Mrs. Malaprop tells US are to be
found son the banks Of the Nie," and throws US
over its head, we would say in plain pedestrian
prose, that the crisis in locomotive affairs is at
hand who1 substitute is to be provided for the
fuel no furnished to our railways by the dwindng
forests, the scarcity and the price of which al
ready felt in the growing rates of travelling, that
prime necessary of life to all free and independent
A mericans. 1t is fast growing out Of the category
Of relative economies and taking to itself The stern
form and pressure of memorable necessity, this
question of what is TO breathe life and speed into
our locomotives when the forests fail us. And it is
happily question of no difficult solution and one
to which the enterprise and inventive genius of our
countrymen have been industriously and, so far as
can be judged of by experiments under uniavOrable
conditions successfully up Piled.
Wood being the cheapest kind of flel twenty-five
years ago when our railways first began to stretch
their arms across the continent, the locomotives
have, almost without exception, been adapted to
that agent of combustion. But as it becomes scarce
and dear in the insufficient proportion the growth
of the forests bears to the swift demands Of loco
motion, some other cOmbustble must be provided
to take its place. Coal, of course, presents ITSELF
with not so much request as demand to be
taken into our service and, equally of course, il
will compel us to employ its agency as soon as it
can prove that it is the cheaper aud better servant
Corporations are, TO a proyerb, Glow to move 10
the direction Of innovation on established habits,
and, perhaps, it is owing to the circun stance that
our iron pathways are under the control OF those
law.crcated entities which have no bodies to be
kicked and no souls TO be ID, that the cOmpar-
alive merits of wood and coal have not been thor.
ouchly tested and ascertained long ago. But the
matter bas been recently taken up in good earnest,
and day very soon to arrive will see a lOcOmO-
tive, built expressly TO try the economy and energy
Of coal as compared with wood, according to what
seems to be the truest principles of science,
actually running the race for the prize of combined
speed and cheapness. 1t is building at the Boston
Locomotive Works for the Providence and Fall
River Railway Companies, and the higher bidder
of the two is to be its pOssessor should the success
of the engine be such as ii is confidently expected
that it will be.
The extravaganza which has grown out OF the