our wheel round with it. A workman sets a tool to plane its
edge, which shaves off the steel as if it were wood, and reduces it
to the prescribed scale. Then, when its centre has been bored to
receive the axle, the genesis of the wheel is complete, and it
enters upon its life of perpetual revolution. How little do the
innumerable travellers who are carried to their destination upon it
imagine the immense expenditure of care, skill, labour, and thought
that has been expended before a perfect wheel was produced.

Next in natural order come the rails upon which the wheel must run.
The former type of rail was a solid bar of iron, whose end presented
a general resemblance to the letter [T], which was thick at the top
and at the bottom, and smaller in the middle. It was thought that
this rail was not entirely satisfactory, for reasons that cannot be
enumerated here, and accordingly a patent was taken out for a rail
which, it is believed, can be more easily and cheaply manufactured,
with a less expenditure of metal, and which can be more readily
attached to the sleepers. In reality it is designed upon the
principle of the arch, and the end of these rails somewhat
resembles the Greek letter [Omega], for they are hollow, and formed
of a thin plate of metal rolled into this shape. Coming to this very
abode of the Cyclops, the rail-mill, the first machine that appears
resembles a pair of gigantic scissors, which are employed day and
night in snipping off old rails and other pieces of iron into
lengths suitable for the manufacture of new rails.

These scissors, or, perhaps, rather pincers, are driven by
steam-power, and bite off the solid iron as if it were merely strips
of ribbon. There is some danger in this process, for occasionally
the metal breaks and flies, and men's hands are severely injured. At
a guess, the lengths of iron for manufacture into rails may be about
four feet long, and are piled up in flat pieces eight or nine inches
or more in height. These pieces are carried to the furnace, heated
to an intense heat, and then placed under the resistless blows of a
steam-hammer, which welds them into one solid bar of iron, longer
than the separate pieces were. The bar then goes back to the
furnace, and again comes out white-hot. The swinging-shears seize
it, and it is swung along to the rollers. These rollers are two
massive cylindrical iron bars which revolve rapidly one over the
other. The end of the white-hot metal is p