The ideas of William Thomson as to pneumatic and cushioned tires are now, after a lapse of fifty years, generally adopted. Even sportsmen were glad to seize upon them, and wheels of sulkies, provided with the pneumatic tires, have enabled them to lower the record of trotting horses. Their use on many other vehicles has accomplished his objects, “of lessening the power required to draw carriages, rendering the motion easier, and diminishing the noise.” It is impossible to overlook the fact in connection with this subject that the processes and machinery especially invented to make the various parts of a bicycle are as wonderful as the wheel itself. Counting the spokes there are, it is estimated, more than 300 different parts in such a wheel. The best and latest inventions and discoveries in the making of metals, wood, rubber and leather have been drawn upon in supplying these useful carriers. And what a revolution they have produced in the making of good roads, the saving of time, the dispatch of business, and more than all else, in the increase of the pleasure, the health and the amusement of mankind! It was quite natural that when the rubber cushion and pneumatic tires rounded the pleasure of easy and noiseless riding in vehicles that _Motor vehicles_ should be revived and improved. So we have the _Automobiles_ in great variety. Invention has been and is still being greatly exercised as to the best motive power, in the adaption of electric motors, oil and gasoline or vapour engines, springs and air pumps, in attempts to reduce the number of complicated parts, and to render less strenuous the mental and muscular strain of the operator. _Traction Engines._--The old road engines that antedated the locomotives are being revived, and new ideas springing from other arts are being incorporated in these useful machines to render them more available than in former generations. Many of the principles and features of motor vehicles, but on a heavier scale, are being introduced to adapt them to the drawing of far heavier loads. Late devices comprise a spring link between the power and the traction wheel to prevent too sudden a start, and permit a yielding motion; steering devices by which the power of the engine is used to steer the machine; and application of convenient and easily-worked brakes. An example of a modern traction engine may be found attached to one or more heavy cars adapted for street work, and on which may be found apparatus for making the mixed materials of which the roadbed is to be constructed, and all of which is moved along as the road or street surface is completed. When these fine roads become the possession of a country light traction engines for passenger traffic will be found largely supplanting the horse and the steam railroad engines.