Year: 1867

We must dismiss the numbering system Of
trains" for high speed traffic, and resort to
a vehicle combining engine, tender and car
rage, in which fifty passengers may GO at
an average rate of sixty miles an hour at
moderate cost, and with but forty or fifty tons
of total weight in motion. (The obstacle to
rapid travelling on railroad at present. is the
great weight and unsteadiness of the vehi-
cles, involving an enormous waste of power
and increase of risk at high speedy As
for goods traffic except express freighting, we
must go back and mOdernize water carriage,
penetrating all parts Of the country with
water system, of rivers and canals Tor steam
boats of $50 tons burden. new class Of
ocean steamers must be had, 500 to 600 feet
long, twain-screwed, and driven at the rate
of is miles an hour, making the Alantie
passage in an ACREAGE of eight days. The
only requisites wanting to success in such
steamers, are full line, regular and fire.
quent departures,and profitable reduction Of
fares. A single ship like the Great Eastern
can never be filled up, because nobody wants
to wait for to the end of a month or six
weeks, when inferior steamers are sailiug
every two or three days.


In regard to motion power, thousand of
readers would be astonished if it were now
lCftO udS Sdlu lAldt tu6 udy5 OA
steam are already numbered, and that hot
air is TO become the the great motor, bend
ing the subsection of electricity to the yoke.


Probably few have formed any conception
of the immense change in building which
is to follow the recent perfectiDg Of artificial
stone. Il has been, exposed to every con-
ceivable trial, by boiling freezing, acids and
foul gases, with some four years practical use,
and appears to be unalterable-an almost in
comparable stone in all the artistic forms and
cOlors that may be desired, at cost less than
that of brick. Hydraulic elevators are re-
ferred to as destined to supersede the use Of
stairs to great extent and to a asst saving
Of weary, slow and Improbable toll. One
of the grandest improvements that must
now be imminent, is the perfection and gen.
eral adoption of the Bessemer process for the
conversion of all kinds of iron direct from
the blast furnace into bars and casting of
steel, with mechanical treatment of what
ever character in the melted condition. Mr..
Bessemer himselfhss made excellent tin plate
sheets, which could be folded like a news
paper, one fold across another without crack
ing at the corner,-merely by pouring the
contents Of crucible Of melted steel be-
tween small pair of rolls without any 9TH
er working whatever


In warfare, the day of piston shot and
gigantic guns is coming. A 20 inch shot
will be fred from 40 inch gun; shot of
ton weight, with an initial velocity of 1,600
feet per second from charge Of 450 bs.,
but with litter greater destructive strain up
on the metal of the gun than in the old
fashioned cast-iron ordnance, aad with an
effect of ninety million foot pound, sufici-
eient to punch a 20-ipch hole in a good
wrought iron plate 2s inches thick, and to
go through any now existing iron clad like
wicker basket There are clear and de-
monstrable principles on which such guns
may be constructed. In the field also, great
changes are before us, not only in rifles but
in bullets, in which the exploive principle
is yet to be applied with all its terrible eff
cheney Scientific american.