ar loads
are brought. The machine is driven ahead by a locomotive, and the work
is done so rapidly that 60 men are required to wait on it, but they do
more work than twice as many could do by the old system, and the work is
done quite as well. The chief contractor of the road gives it as his
opinion that when the machine is improved by making a few changes in the
method of handling rails and ties it will be able to put down five or six
miles per day. This will render it possible to lay down track twelve
times as fast as the usual rate by hand, and it will do the work at less
expense. The invention will be of immense importance to the country in
connection with the Pacific railroad, which it was calculated could be
built as fast as the track could be laid, and no faster; but hereafter
the speed will be determined by the grading, which cannot advance more
than five miles a day. Thirty millions of dollars have already been
invested on the Pacific railroad, and if the time of completion is
hastened one year by this tracklayer, as it will be if Central and Union
Companies have money enough to grade each five miles a day, there will be
a saving of three million dollars on interest alone on that one road.

--_Alla California_, 1868.

A GROWING LAD.

"This your boy, ma'am?" inquired a collector of a country woman, "he's
too big for a 'alf ticket." "Oh, is he?" replied the mother. "Well,
perhaps he is now, mister; but he wasn't when he started. The train is
ever so much behind time--has been so long on the road--and he's a
growing lad!"

FORGED TICKETS.

Attempts to defraud railway companies by means of forged tickets are
seldom made, and still more seldom successful. In 1870, a man who lived
in a toll-house near Dudley, and who rented a large number of tolls on
the different turnpikes, in almost every part of the country, devised a
plan for travelling cheaply. He set up a complete fount of type,
composing stick, and every requisite for printing tickets, and provided
himself with coloured papers, colours, and paints to paint them, and
plain cards on which to paste them; and he prepared tickets for journeys
of great length, and available to and from different stations on the
London and North-Western, Great Western, and Midland lines. On arriving
one day at the ticket platform at Derby, he presented a ticket from
Masbro' to Smethwick. The collector, w