Between 1823 and 1838, the era of the steam-carriages, that prognostication had already been fulfilled: and again, in another sense, with the introduction of railways. But it was not until the close of 1896 that the real horseless era began to dawn. Railways, extravagantly discriminative tolls, and restrictions upon weight and speed killed the steam-carriages, and for more than fifty years the highways knew no other mechanical locomotion than that of the familiar traction-engines, restricted to three miles an hour and preceded by a man with a red flag. It is true that a few hardy inventors continued to waste their time and money on devising new forms of steam-carriages, and were only fined for their pains when they were rash enough to venture on the public roads, as when Bateman, of Greenwich, invented a steam-tricycle, and Sir Thomas Parkyn, Bart., was fined at Greenwich Police Court, April 8th, 1881, for riding it. That incident appears to have finally quenched the ardour of inventive genius in this country; but a new locomotive force already existing unsuspected was about this period being experimented with on the Continent by one Gottlieb Daimler, whose name--generally mispronounced--is now sufficiently familiar to all who know anything of motor-cars. Daimler was at that time connected with the Otto Gas Engine Works in Germany, where the adaptive Germans were exploiting the gas-engine principle invented by Crossley many years before. [Sidenote: MOTOR-CARS] In 1886 Daimler produced his motor-bicycle, and by 1891 his motor engine was adapted by Panhard and Levassor to other types of vehicles. The French were thus the first to perceive the great possibilities of it, and by 1894 the motor-cars already in use in France were so numerous that the first sporting event in the history of them--the 760 miles' race from Paris to Bordeaux and back--was run. [Illustration: THE "OLD TIMES," 1888. _From a painting by Alfred S. Bishop._] The following year Mr. Evelyn Ellis brought over the first motor-car to reach England, a 4 h.-p. Panhard, and a little later, Sir David Salomons, of Tunbridge Wells, imported a Peugeot. In that town, October 15th, 1895, he held the first show of cars--four or five at most--in this country. Then began an agitation raised by a few enthusiasts for the removal of the existing restrictions upon road traffic. A deputation waited upon the Local Government Board, and the Light Locomotives Act of 1896 was passed in August, legalising mechanical traction up to a speed of fourteen miles an hour, the Act to come into operation on November 14th. For whatever reason, the Light Locomotives Act was passed so quietly, under the ægis of the Local Government Board, as to almost wear the aspect of an organised secrecy, and the coming of what is now known as Motor-car Day was utterly unsuspected by the bulk of the public. It even caught the newspapers unprepared, until the week before.