To his already extensive list of gas cooking apparatus, Mr Fletcher, Warrington, has just added what he calls his ‘Large Cottage Cooker,’ which is simply a Gas cooking-stove in the cheapest and simplest form to be effective. For two pounds may be had a good roasting, and a fairly good pastry and bread oven, with a reversible boiler and grillers on the top. The body of the stove is made of galvanised iron, and the shelves are wrought iron. The height of the whole is thirty inches; space inside the oven twelve by twelve by sixteen inches. When we consider their convenience to housekeepers and the time which they save, we do not wonder that the use of such stoves is rapidly extending. The equable nature of the heat insures good cookery; a pot or kettle may be boiled on the burner in a few minutes, and the housewife may be kept quite easy as to the state of her kitchen fire for cooking purposes. In fact, in summer the kitchen fire may be dispensed with altogether. There is no smoke or ashes; pans and kettles are easier kept clean, and all this is done at but a trifling expense for gas—say one penny per hour for a medium stove. A potato steamer will be found a useful adjunct to the stove. By its aid, the potatoes, after being boiled, are finished off with steam in the upper part of the same vessel; and will be found drier and mealier than if cooked in an ordinary pot in the old way. RAILWAY PASSENGERS. A curious return has just been issued, showing the number of railway passengers who have travelled on all the railways in the United Kingdom during the half-year ending 30th June last, by which it will be seen that railway shareholders continue to be mainly indebted for their dividends to third-class traffic. During the above period the number of passengers who travelled were as follows, omitting fractions: First class, sixteen million one hundred thousand; second class, twenty-five million eight hundred thousand; third class, two hundred and forty-one million seven hundred thousand—the number of third-class passengers being more than five hundred per cent. in excess of first and second class combined; and the relative amount of receipts is in equal proportion. This remarkable difference applies to all the lines in common, the third-class passengers being in excess all throughout the kingdom. But the North London line is especially striking in regard to receipts, inasmuch as the receipts from the third-class passengers amounted to about eight hundred per cent. more than from the first and second combined! Within the same period, the Metropolitan and District Railways, and the North London Railway, carried over fifty million passengers; to which enormous return must be added, as showing the prodigious traffic within the area of the metropolis, that of the Great Eastern; London, Chatham, and Dover; London and Brighton; South-western; and South-eastern—a large portion of whose traffic is purely metropolitan. THE NEW ALBO-CARBON LIGHT.