ones coming in, there is a prospect that our ambition to increase the
circulation of this paper to one hundred thousand will be gratified.

* * * * *




AMERICAN AND ENGLISH RAILWAY PRACTICE CONTRASTED.


A paper on "American Locomotives and Rolling Stock," read before the
Institution of Civil Engineers, in England, with an abstract on the
discussion thereon, has been forwarded to us by the publishers, William
Clowes and Sons, Stamford street and Charing Cross, London.

We have seldom met with a pamphlet of greater interest and value. The
whole subject of American as contrasted with English railroad practice
is reviewed, and the differences which exist, with the necessities for
such differences ably discussed. Mr. Colburn shows these differences
to be external rather than fundamental, and traces many of the
peculiarities of American construction to the "initiative of English
engineers." The cause for the adoption and retention of these
peculiarities he attributes to "the necessities of a new country and the
comparative scarcity of capital," and thinks that but for these causes"
American railways and their rolling stock would have doubtless been
constructed, as in other countries, upon English models, and worked, in
most respects, upon English principles of management.

He reviews the origin and introduction of American features of railway