In America the larger concerns are so vastly predominant over the small that the buyer has only to decide between articles of established reputation; the American factories do not seem to have ever been small. In a large majority of cases there are certain peculiarities about the machines which not only settle the matter _nationally_, but as to individual makers. Some little point at once takes the eye or the heart of the buyer, and that settles it all; and perhaps it is best it should be so. Nationally considered, the English have had much larger and more varied experience in the cycle industry than we have had; they have more experts in the line and are nearer to the fountain head of supplies, particularly in regard to tubing, and no matter how soon we on this side may have tube-works, it will be some time before we can depend upon them. The English have taken advantage of their good fortune, and, together with the natural precedence in this art which we all agree has been allotted to them, they have gone ahead without the erroneous veneration generally felt in favor of their grandfather’s method, which has blinded them so often in their advancement in other arts. It was a marvellous sight to the writer to see a bicycle firm, flush with the times in all their work, in a factory almost nestling against other places devoted to making fusee watches with “Granddaddy winding-apparatuses,” making watch-cases by gradually punching them into a conical cast-iron cavity, cutting alleged screw bezels with a chaser in a lathe pulled back by a hickory spring, and such eocenic appliances.