_M. Serpollet on the “Easter Egg,” which at Nice covered a kilometre in the record time of 29-4/5 secs. (over 75 miles per hour). This car is run with steam._] The improvement of highroads, and road-making generally, accelerated the rate of posting. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century an average of ten or even twelve miles an hour was maintained on the Bath Road. But that pace was considered inadequate when the era of the “iron horse” commenced, and the decay of stage-driving followed hard upon the growth of railways. What should have been the natural successor of the stage-coach was driven from the road by ill-advised legislation, which gave the railroads a monopoly of swift transport, which has but lately been removed. The history of the steam-coach, steam-carriage, automobile, motor-car--to give it its successive names--is in a manner unique, showing as it does, instead of steady development of a practical means of locomotion, a sudden and decisive check to an invention worthy of far better treatment than it received. The compiler of even a short survey of the automobile’s career is obliged to divide his account into two main portions, linked together by a few solitary engineering achievements. The first period (1800-1836), will, without any desire to arrogate for England more than her due or to belittle the efforts of any other nations, be termed the English period, since in it England took the lead, and produced by far the greatest number of steam-carriages. The second (1870 to the present day) may, with equal justice, be styled the Continental period, as witnessing the great developments made in automobilism by French, German, Belgian, and American engineers: England, for reasons that will be presently noticed, being until quite recently too heavily handicapped to take a part in the advance. _Historical._--It is impossible to discover who made the first self-moving carriage. In the sixteenth century one Johann Haustach, a Nuremberg watchmaker, produced a vehicle that derived its motive power from coiled springs, and was in fact a large edition of our modern clockwork toys. About the same time the Dutch, and among them especially one Simon Stevin, fitted carriages with sails, and there are records of a steam-carriage as early as the same century.