• • Good company.
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The ehairman of the C.V. Committee of the S.Ivf .M.1. between two of the judges. A roadside halt of the 40h.p. Mercedes, with its careful driver at the wheel, during the recent trials.
_adoption, practically, only at points where vehicular traffic would otherwise become, by reason of its frequency or continuous nature, an unbearable nuisance. The entrances to some of the London railway termini are cases in point. Here, with typically severe loads and stresses imposed, the wearing qualities of rubber have been little less than a revelation to people who do not comprehend its capacity to resist destructive influences within certain limits of compression. Enough data exist to meet initial criticisms as to likely endurrance, and, though much remains to be done by way of collation, other necessary qualities have yet to be demonstrated ab initio. They include the provision of a composition that will have suitable resistance and adhesion coefficients, and one that will not be prohibitive in first cost. Rubber will have to recede to less than three shillings a pound, before much can be done even in the direction of experiment, but we hope that the National Dustless Roads Committee, out of pity for -those who dwell in noisome cities, will take the proposition into favourable consideration for inclusion with the contemplated tests of other materials. In the meantime, just as we human beings wear leathersoled boots, which can be repaired in detail without inconvenience to our neighbours, instead of paving the side-walks with leather and equipping our own foot-gear with sheathings of granite, we opine that rubber-tired wheels will be given a general preference. The proposition, which has recently been mentioned in the engineering supplement of " The Times," is, none the less, deserving of ventilation and discussion, but comparative and quantitative figures must be accumulated before any forward step occurs.