with a pressure of from 40 to 50 lb.  The rails were light; they were jointed in the chairs, which were generally carried on stone blocks, thus affording most excellent anvils for the battering to pieces of the ends of the rails—­that is to say, for the destruction of the very parts where they were most vulnerable.  The engines were not competent to draw heavy trains, and it was a common practice to have at the foot of an incline a shed containing a “bank engine,” which ran out after the trains as they passed, and pushed them up to the top of the hill.  Injectors were then unknown, and donkey-pumps were unknown, and therefore, when it was necessary to fill up the boiler, if it had not been properly pumped up before the locomotive came to rest, it had to run about the line in order to work its feed-pumps.  To get over this difficulty, it was occasionally the practice to insert into a line of rails, in a siding, a pair of wheels, with their tops level with that of the rails so that the engine wheels could run upon the rims.  Then, the locomotive being fixed to prevent it from moving off the pair of wheels thus endways, it was put into revolution, its driving wheels bearing, as already stated, upon the rims of the pair of wheels in the rails, and thus the engine worked its feed-pumps without interfering (by its needless running up and down the line) with the traffic.  It should have been stated, that at this time there was no link motion, no practical expansion of the steam, and that even the reversal of the engine had to be effected by working the sides by hand gear, in the manner in use in marine engines.  When the British Association originated, although the Manchester and Liverpool Railway had been opened for a year, there is no doubt that the 300 members who then came to this city found their way here by the slow process of the stage-coach, the loss of which we so much deplore in the summer and in fine weather, but the obligatory use of which we should so much regret in the miserable weather now prevailing in these islands.

In 1881, we know that railways are everywhere inserted.  Steel rails, double the weight of the original iron ones, are used.  Wooden sleepers have replaced the stone blocks, and they, in their turn, will probably give way to sleepers of steel.  The joints are now made by means of fish-plates, and the most vulnerable part of the rail, the end, is no longer laid on an anvil for a purpose of being smashed to pieces, but the ends of the rails are now almost always over a void, and thereby are not more affected by wear than is any other part of the rail.  The speed is now from 50 to 60 miles an hour for passenger trains, while slow speed goods engines, weighing 45 tons, draw behind them coal trains of 800 tons.  The injector is now commonly employed, and, by its aid, a careful driver of the engine of a stopping train can fill up his boiler while at rest at the stations.  The link motion is in common use, to which, no doubt, is owing the very considerable economy with which the locomotive engine now works.