by which Mr. Rammell proposes to work the traffic. Groups of carriages would be placed at distances. coinciding with the stations, and these carriages would be worked by the elastic rope of air in a continuous circuit, just as we see the buckets in the dredging-machines on the Thames working in an endless chain-one set of carriages going along one side of the double tube, and another returning by the other tube. It would be so arranged, however, that between station and station only one group of carriages could be in the tube at the same time, thus preventing any possibility of accident either by collision or by one carriage overtaking another.

It is needless to say that as the atmosphere in these railway tubes would be circulating every moment, there would be perfect ventilation; we say tubes, but they may be brick arches, just such as those of the Thames Tunnel, only much smaller,-a headway of nine feet, with a width of eight, being quite sufficient for the passage of very roomy carriages, seated like an omnibus and lighted like an ordinary railway carriage.

The plan seems so utterly strange that the reader may shrug his shoulders and doubt its practicability; but that part of the business has been disposed of at Euston Square, and we are informed that the whole plan of operations will, in all probability, be tested in public ere long.

We are told that traffic can be worked considerably cheaper by this method than can be done by the locomotive, and that the cost of constructing an under

ground rail on this system would also be one-third less than the cost of the Metropolitan line. These are matters which have to be brought to the actual working test; at the same time, the comparatively diminished area of tunnelling required, and the great gain consequent on the abolition of the heavy locomotive, which is so destructive to the rails, tend to corroborate the correctness of the statement. Gradients which would be impossible to the heavy locomotive are ascended and descended with perfect ease by means of the elastic rope of air. For instance, the ascent and descent of the Fleet Valley at Holborn Hill and Snow Hill will be as easily worked as the level road, and the train can work through sinuous curves which would be fatal to the locomotive.

The strong pressure public opinion is bringing to bear upon the Government in favour of keeping the few open spots we have in the metropolis, will doubtless be fatal to many of the schemes which propose to cut and carve our great city in all directions. It seems, therefore, that a scheme which can be worked underground in a space not larger than that occupied by good-sized culverts, and which would not interfere with the great drains-for in the main thoroughfares, such as Oxford Street, there is ample room between them and the roadway-stands a good chance of obtaining public favour. But whether this prove to be only one of those abortive schemes which Time gathers year by year so plentifully in his wallet, or a great invention, there can be no doubt that the Pneumatic Despatch Company have established their

principle of working, and that this great city will henceforth have its lighter traffic and parcels and letters carried on by a circulation of air ramifying in a network of tubes through soil, as the human body was supposed, before the time of Harvey, to be supplied by a similar circulation.

VILLAGE HOSPITALS.

THERE is one great fault in our medical education: in the great majority of cases, the skill of the young surgeon begins to rust as soon as he settles down into country practice. A young man may leave the College of Surgeons with a very tolerable amount of anatomy at his fingers' ends; he may have made demonstrations on the dead body to the examiners' satisfaction, and he may leave for some country village with his diploma in his pocket; but here, as a general rule, his knowledge of the higher branches of the surgical art begins to fade. And the reason is obvious : the great majority of cases he has to treat among the poor are medical cases. It is a very uncommon thing to find severe accidents happening to the agricultural peasant

-or at least it has been so; and where they have occurred, the appliances of their homes are so deficient, that as a rule it is the custom to send such cases to the nearest county or borough hospital.

The tendency of this plan is to encourage the hospital surgeon at the expense of the general practitioner in the country; and we may also say at the expense of the poor patient, who often has to be

removed for many miles in a rough jolting cart whilst suffering great agony. Moreover much valuable time is lost in the transit. In manufacturing districts, where machinery at times causes frightful accidents, the local surgeons are in many cases exceedingly skilful and full of resources, for cases of great urgency are occurring every day which must be treated on the spot; and the fact that agriculture is now assuming the form of a manufacture, in which complicated machinery is employed, has led to the necessity for a decentralization of our present hospital system. Such frightful accidents sometimes take place with our steam thrashing and ploughing machines, that the man dies unles he can be treated upon the spot.

Such being the present state of things, we hear with much pleasure that an experiment, hitherto very successful, is being made in the village of Cranley, near Guildford, in Surrey, to establish a Village Hospital. We do not mean some fine establishment, with a fine