poles. This will also tend to preserve good carriages from the damage they at present suffer from the heat of the horses, and the quantity of mud which is thrown by their heels upon the front of the vehicle. The reins will of course have to be longer, but this cannot be of much consequence; the driver of a brougham is further from the horse than the driver of a mail phaeton, but we do not consider that the brougham is more difficult to drive than the mail phaeton on that account. Another fashion prevalent in this and in some other countries, may prove, in the opinion of the drivers of the future, to be a fallacy; I mean the supposed necessity for the driver to sit nearly upright, which necessitates a deep boot and a clumsy thick coachman’s cushion. In America, Russia, and in parts of Germany the driver sits low, but places his feet against a bar in front of the footboard, which in their carriages is longer than in ours. I have seen four horses driven very well and easily in a low landau, and very powerful fast-trotting pulling horses held in with apparent ease. It has seemed to me that our coachmen are often in danger of being pulled over by their horses; and certainly, when an accident happens in a collision they are easily thrown from their boxes. They do not have the purchase and security that the Russian drivers especially seem to possess. Perhaps we shall learn from the American carriages a few useful hints in this respect. The American carriage, called, I believe, a “Rock-away,” has a projection over the driver’s seat, to shield him from sun and rain. Some of the Asiatic carriages have an awning for the same purpose. In Italy travelling carriages often had a hood over the driver. In instances where the master of the household likes to drive his own family carriage, it would certainly add to his comfort, and that of any one sitting by him, to have some useful addition of this nature. The greatest novelty introduced by the Americans of the United States is the light waggon, called also “buggy,” a name first given in England a hundred years ago to a light two-wheeled cart carrying one person only, and which we call a “sulky.” These American waggons were modelled from the old German waggon, but they have been so much improved as to be scarcely recognised. The distinctive feature of the German waggon was a light shallow tray, suspended above a slight perch carriage on two grasshopper springs, placed horizontally and parallel with and above the front and hind axle-tree; on the tray one or two seats were placed, the whole was light and inexpensive, and well adapted to a new rough country without good roads. These waggons may still be found in Germany and Switzerland. They were doubtless formed as a development of the V-shaped agricultural waggon already described in the second chapter.