her possibilities seem to offer themselves. Let
us revert to the ideal we have already laid down, and consider what
hopes and obstacles to its attainment there seem to be. The abounding
presence of numerous experimental motors to-day is so stimulating to the
imagination, there are so many stimulated persons at work upon them,
that it is difficult to believe the obvious impossibility of most of
them--their convulsiveness, clumsiness, and, in many cases, exasperating
trail of stench will not be rapidly fined away.[6] I do not think that
it is asking too much of the reader's faith in progress to assume that
so far as a light powerful engine goes, comparatively noiseless,
smooth-running, not obnoxious to sensitive nostrils, and altogether
suitable for high road traffic, the problem will very speedily be
solved. And upon that assumption, in what direction are these new motor
vehicles likely to develop? how will they react upon the railways? and
where finally will they take us?

At present they seem to promise developments upon three distinct and
definite lines.

There will, first of all, be the motor truck for heavy traffic. Already
such trucks are in evidence distributing goods and parcels of various
sorts. And sooner or later, no doubt, the numerous advantages of such an
arrangement will lead to the organization of large carrier companies,
using such motor trucks to carry goods in bulk or parcels on the high
roads. Such companies will be in an exceptionally favourable position to
organize storage and repair for the motors of the general public on
profitable terms, and possibly to co-operate in various ways with the
manufactures of special types of motor machines.

In the next place, and parallel with the motor truck, there will develop
the hired or privately owned motor carriage. This, for all except the
longest journeys, will add a fine sense of personal independence to all
the small conveniences of first-class railway travel. It will be capable
of a day's journey of three hundred miles or more, long before the
developments to be presently foreshadowed arrive. One will change
nothing--unless it is the driver--from stage to stage. One will be free
to dine where one chooses, hurry when one chooses, travel asleep or
awake, stop and pick flowers, turn over in bed of a morning and tell the
carriage to wait--unless, which is highly probable, one sleeps
aboard.[7]...

And thirdly there will be the motor omnibus, attacking or