In appearance it resembled an ordinary omnibus robbed of its horses and pole. The driver had a covered seat low down in the front. The body of the vehicle was painted white, and the lower and storage part blue. While the omnibus was travelling no great fault could be found with it, but its warmest admirers could not say truthfully that when it stopped the sensation was pleasant. It vibrated abominably, and when I had my first ride on it, I echoed inwardly the hope expressed by a fellow-passenger that there was no bilious person present. In the spring of 1900 the motor omnibus was running from Kennington to Oxford Circus, but, towards the end of the year, it disappeared from the London streets. Some months before the Motor Traction Company’s omnibus was placed on the roads an electric ’bus, belonging to a company which was being floated, ran, on many afternoons, from Marble Arch to Notting-hill Gate. It was not licensed, and therefore all rides were free. This omnibus carried no outside passengers, an omission which would have doomed it to failure had it entered into competition with other omnibuses. The proprietors of horse-drawn omnibuses have been accused of want of enterprise because they have not yet adopted motor vehicles, against which they are said to have a prejudice. But these accusations are absurd. Omnibus proprietors are convinced that when a really reliable electric ’bus has been invented, it will pay them to adopt it. So far that omnibus has not been discovered, although for two or three years the proprietors have examined carefully every vehicle brought before them. In the spring of 1900 the Central London Railway was opened, and proved to be the most formidable rival that omnibuses have had since the introduction of tramways. The new electric railway runs from Shepherd’s Bush to the Bank, the fare for the whole journey being twopence. The omnibus fare for the same distance was fivepence. The London General Omnibus Company, which has practically a monopoly of the road between Shepherd’s Bush and Marble Arch, soon felt the effects of the Central London Railway’s cheap fares and quick travelling, and found it necessary to transfer many of their Shepherd’s Bush omnibuses to other routes. With other electric railways projected, it is said, by some people, that the long-continued prosperity of omnibuses is drawing to a close. There seems, however, to be no real reason for such an assertion. The District and Metropolitan Railways, when first opened, inflicted greater damage to the omnibuses than the Central London has done, and yet to-day their directors complain of omnibus competition. Railway directors bemoaning omnibus competition! Shillibeer was not, after all, wrong in believing that omnibuses could compete successfully with a railway.