nibus_, with its
phaeton-like coursers will be eclipsed; and a journey to Bath and the
Hot Wells by steam will soon be an everyday event.

Descriptions of Mr. Gurney's carriage have been so often before the
public, that extended detail is unnecessary. Besides, all our liege
subscribers will turn to the account in our No. 287. The recent
improvements have been perspicuously stated by Mr. Herapath, of
Cranford, in a letter in the _Times_ newspaper, and we cannot do
better than adopt and abridge a portion of his communication.

"The present differs from the earlier carriage, in several
improvements in the machinery, suggested by experiment; also in
having no propellers;[2] and in having only four wheels instead of
six; the apparatus for guiding being applied immediately to the two
fore-wheels, bearing a part of the weight, instead of two extra
leading wheels bearing little or none. No person can conceive the
absolute control this apparatus gives to the director of the carriage,
unless he has had the same opportunities of observing it which I
had in a ride with Mr. Gurney. Whilst the wheels obey the slightest
motions of the hand, a trifling pressure of the foot keeps them
inflexibly steady, however rough the ground. To the hind axle, which
is very strong, and bent into two cranks of nine inches radius, at
right angles to each other, is applied the propelling power by means
of pistons from two horizontal cylinders. By this contrivance, and a
peculiar mode of admitting the steam to the cylinders, Mr. Gurney has
very ingeniously avoided that cumbersome appendage to steam-engines,
the fly-wheel, and preserves uniformity of action by constantly having
one cylinder on full pressure, whilst the other is on the reduced
expansive. The dead points--that is, those in which a piston has no
effect from being in the same right line with its crank,--are also
cleared by the same means. For as the cranks are at right angles, when
one piston is at a dead point, the other has a position of maximum
effect, and is then urged by full steam power; but no sooner has the
former passed the dead point, than an expansion valve opens on it with
full steam, and closes on the latter. Firmly fixed to the extremities
of the axle, and at right angles to it, are the two 'carriers'--(two
strong irons extending each way to the felloes of the wheels.) These
irons may be bolted to the felloes of the wheels or not, or to the
felloes of one wheel only. Thus the