All of the motor carriages illustrated are of American make, and for lightness, grace, and efficiency they have no superiors. A peculiar and recent type which attracted much attention and took the gold medal at the Motor Carriage Exposition at Berlin, held in September, 1899, is the Pieper double motor carriage. It has both a benzine motor and an electric motor, which can be worked separately or together, and yet is said to be lighter than most electric carriages. On a long journey, remote from electrical supply, the benzine motor is used not only to propel the carriage, but by running the electric motor as a dynamo or generator, recharges the storage battery. On level, easy roads, where the power required falls below the maximum power exerted by the benzine motor, the electric motor changes automatically to a dynamo and the surplus force of the benzine motor is converted into current and stored. In running down hill or stopping the carriage, the momentum of the vehicle is also received by the electric motor acting as a dynamo and brake, and is stored as electricity in the battery, which is thus in an ordinary journey kept constantly charged. It is not probable that man will ever be able to get along without the horse, but the release of the noble animal from the bondage of city traffic, which was begun only a few years ago with mechanical street car propulsion, promises now to be extensively advanced by the substitution of the motor carriage and the auto-truck for team-drawn vehicles. The rapidity with which this industry has grown, and its promise for the future may be realized when it is remembered that so far as practical results are concerned it has all grown up in the last decade of the Nineteenth Century, and yet to-day it is said that there are already in the United States about 200 incorporated concerns with an aggregate capitalization of some $500,000,000, organized to build automobiles, to say nothing of the vast number of individuals who are experimenting in this field. The greatest activity, however, is to be found in France, which claims over 600 manufacturers and has in use 6,000 automobiles out of a total of 11,000 in all of Europe. The most significant suggestion for the future of the automobile is that the cost of maintenance and all things considered, it is in some applications cheaper than the horse-drawn vehicles of the same efficiency. In a consular report of Oct. 16, 1899, forwarded to the State Department by Mr. Marshal Halsted, consul at Birmingham, Mr. E. H. Bayley, an English authority, is quoted as saying that in operating heavy motor vehicles for hauling, the cost is three half-pence (three cents) per net ton per mile, as compared with 18 to 24 cents per net ton per mile by horse-drawn vehicles. In England much attention is being given to this subject.