_Brakes_, railway and electric, have already been referred to in the proper chapters. In the latest system of railroading greater attention has been paid to the lives and limbs of those employed as workmen on the trains, especially to those of brakemen. And if corporations have been slow to adopt such merciful devices, legislatures have stepped in to help the matter. One great source of accidents in this respect has been due to the necessity of the brakemen entering between the cars while they are in motion to couple them by hand. This is now being abolished by _automatic couplers_, by which, when the locking means have been withdrawn from connection or thrown up, they will be so held until the cars meet again, when the locking parts on the respective cars will be automatically thrown and locked, as easily and on the same principle as the hand of one man may clasp the hand of another. The comfort of passengers and the safety of freight have also been greatly increased by the invention of _Buffers_ on railroad cars and trains to prevent sudden and violent concussion. Fluid pressure car buffers, in which a constant supply of fluid under pressure is provided by a pump or train pipe connected to the engine is one of a great variety. Another notable improvement in this line is the splendid vestibule trains, in which the cars are connected to one another by enclosed passages and which at their meeting ends are provided with yieldingly supported door-like frames engaging one another by frictional contact, usually, whereby the shock and rocking of cars are prevented in starting and stopping, and their oscillation reduced to a minimum. As collisions and accidents cannot always be prevented, car frames are now built in which the frames are trussed, and made of rolled steel plates, angles, and channels, whereby a car body of great resistance to telescoping or crushing is obtained. CHAPTER XXIX. SHIPS AND SHIP-BUILDING. “Far as the breeze can bear, the billows foam, Survey our empire, and behold our home.” “Ships are but boards,” soliloquised the crafty Shylock, and were this still true, yet this present period has seen wonderful changes in construction. The high castellated bows and sterns and long prows of _The Great Harry_, of the seventeenth century, and its successors in the eighteenth, with some moderation of cumbersome matter, gave way to lighter, speedier forms, first appearing in the quick-gliding Yankee clippers, during the first decade of the nineteenth century. Eminent naval architects have regarded the proportions of Noah’s ark, 300 cubits long, 50 cubits broad and 30 cubits high, in which the length was six times the breadth, and the depth three-fifths of the breadth, as the best combination of the elements of strength, capacity and stability.