London underwent many notable changes, structural and otherwise, between 1892 and 1914, but perhaps the most remarkable were brought about by the engineer rather than by the architect. Macadam had yielded to asphalt, and now asphalt largely gave place to the wood pavement. Electric lighting became general, and with the "electrification" of the old Underground a favourite source of well-founded complaint was finally removed. But the conspicuous and outstanding feature of London traffic in this period was the coming of the Tubes, while above ground it was revolutionized by the motor, and the passing to a great extent of horse-drawn vehicles. As early as 1902 Mr. Briton Rivière uttered a lament over the disappearance of the horse from London traffic. His point of view was quite intelligible, but it was purely artistic. _Punch_ was a great lover of the "noble animal," but it was precisely for that reason that he welcomed its release from the drudgery and suffering, the maltreatment and overloading inseparable from the old order. The speeding-up of street traffic brought with it new perils and noises, but it freed us from many discomforts and nuisances--for example, the "cab-runner," rampant in the middle 'nineties, who plagued unprotected females by his extortions and insolence until the coming of the taxi ran him off his legs. At the time of the South African War, when _Punch_ noted the commandeering of 'bus horses for service at the front, he declared that there had been hardly any improvement in the public vehicles of London since the days of Shillibeer--the coach-builder who introduced omnibuses to London in 1829. It is true that the drivers were famous for their conversational powers, which motor-bus drivers are unable to exercise owing to their isolation, but only mediævalists can lament the passing of the old lumbering, stuffy 'bus, dimly lit by oil lamps, and in wet weather redolent of damp straw. As for the "growler," _Punch_ was decidedly premature when in 1905, the centenary of the year in which public conveyances first plied for hire in London, he assumed that its reign was over. In 1907 he paid the "growler" the homage of a cartoon in which _Punch_, attended by the shades of John Leech and Charles Keene, admitted that the "Cabby" had been "very useful to him"--as a target for generally hostile criticism. In spite of _Punch's_ repeated valedictions, the "growler" continued to emerge during strikes in later years, and I am not certain whether it can be pronounced to be dead even yet. In 1907, again, there is a curious reference to the now largely disused practice of whistling for cabs. An irritated hansom-cabby observes to a gentleman who has been whistling for a "taximeter cab" for ten minutes--in series of three whistles--"Try _four_ whistles, guv'nor, and p'r'aps you'll get an airship." The whistling code had first of all to be revised so as to establish the precedence of the "taxi," and then was simplified by the