In some of the stations, the London fire-brigade still clings to the rather old-fashioned custom of keeping the horses standing in harness, in stables at the rear, to be led out to the apparatus by hand in event of a "call"; and this makes their "turnout" in answer to an alarm appear to us to be a peculiarly slow one, accustomed as we are to the remarkably quick methods employed in our fire-departments. But several of the newer houses, built within the last few years, are supplied with many ingenious American time-saving devices--sliding-poles, swinging-harness, etc.,--while the horses are kept in box-stalls on the apparatus floor, in convenient running distance of the engines, all of which has considerably reduced the time consumed in turning out to an alarm. The English fire-engine is a small affair, much smaller than our steam fire-engines, having about one half the pumping capacity of the American engines; and nearly every one in London is a combined engine and hose-wagon,--the hose being carried in a box-like compartment on each side of the machine, just back of the driver's seat. This "hose-box" serves as a convenient place for the firemen to sit while riding to the fire. Quite a number of automobile fire-engines are in service in the London brigade, big, businesslike-looking machines, about as large as some of our motor-engines, and capable of great speed while answering an alarm. As a contrast to this up-to-date equipment, a number of "manuals," or hand-engines, are in use, which ought to have been sent to the scrap-heap years ago. In the way of ladder-trucks they are very well supplied in London, for, in addition to several "horse ladder-escapes," as they are called (a fairly long extension ladder carried on a horse-drawn truck, and which can be detached from this truck and pushed close to a building), they have a great many hand-pushed "ladder-escapes" (a shorter extension ladder of the same type and pushed by hand) scattered throughout the city, housed in substations in the principal squares and more important thoroughfares, and intended for emergency use only until the regular apparatus arrives. They have also a few "aërial" ladder-trucks carrying a very long extension ladder which can be raised, by means of an ingenious little engine using carbonic-acid gas for its motive power, to a height of eighty feet or more. But aside from use as a kind of water-tower at large fires, these aërial ladders are rarely extended to their full length, for the houses are nearly all of a uniform height, not over five or six floors, and the ordinary extension ladder is sufficiently long to reach the upper parts of these buildings.