Gigantic motor trucks carrying tons of freight twist in and out through crowded streets, controlled by one man more easily than a driver guides a spirited horse on a country road. Frail motor bicycles dash round the platter-like curves of cycle tracks at railroad speed, and climb hills while the riders sit at ease with feet on coasters. An electric motor-car wends the streets of New York every day with thirty-five or forty sightseers on its broad back, while a groom in whipcord blows an incongruous coaching-horn in the rear. Motor plows, motor ambulances, motor stages, delivery wagons, street-cars without tracks, pleasure vehicles, and even baby carriages, are to be seen everywhere. In 1845, motor vehicles were forbidden the streets for the sake of the horses; in 1903, the horses are being crowded off by the motor-cars. The motor is the more economical--it is the survival of the fittest. [Illustration: AN AUTOMOBILE PLOW A form of automobile that can be applied to all sorts of uses on the farm.] THE FASTEST STEAMBOATS In 1807, the first practical steamboat puffed slowly up the Hudson, while the people ranged along the banks gazed in wonder. Even the grim walls of the Palisades must have been surprised at the strange intruder. Robert Fulton's _Clermont_ was the forerunner of the fleets upon fleets of power-driven craft that have stemmed the currents of a thousand streams and parted the waves of many seas. The _Clermont_ took several days to go from New York to Albany, and the trip was the wonder of that time. During the summer of 1902 a long, slim, white craft, with a single brass smokestack and a low deck-house, went gliding up the Hudson with a kind of crouching motion that suggested a cat ready to spring. On her deck several men were standing behind the pilot-house with stop-watches in their hands. The little craft seemed alive under their feet and quivered with eagerness to be off. The passenger boats going in the same direction were passed in a twinkling, and the tugs and sailing vessels seemed to dwindle as houses and trees seem to shrink when viewed from the rear platform of a fast train.