Another substitute for the horse, I may remark in parenthesis, comes in for notice at the time of our Egyptian campaigns.
The rules for the road in 1878 are farcical, their only interest being the reference to proprietors of 64-in. machines, for this was the day of the old "ordinary." The use of bells was first made obligatory in Liverpool in 1877. Twelve years later, when the "safety" bicycle was coming in, Punch addressed a warning to enthusiasts in the form of a skeleton cyclist stooping over the handles, in the approved attitude, with an alarming curvation of the spine. In the same year allusion is made to the thrill caused by the Bishop of Chester's taking to the bicycle; but the rumour was exaggerated, for Dr. Jayne only patronized the tricycle. A propos of skeletons, it may be noted that Mr. (afterwards Sir) Seymour Haden's advocacy of burial in wicker coffins and the exhibition held at Stafford House to popularize the scheme in 1875 merely served Punch as an occasion for punning on the projector's name, and suggesting that the funeral march of the future seemed likely to be Haydn's "With Verdure Clad," as the wicker baskets were to be filled with moss and ferns.
CAMEL-SHIP!
Tommy Atkins (to Mate, who had been told off to the same refractory Animal): "Oh, look here, Bill, here's this cussed Beast has been playing 'Cup and Ball' with me for the last Two Hours! Missed me ever so many times!"
(Vide Special Correspondence from the Soudan.)
Flying Machines
Of more topical interest to the readers of to-day is the account given by Punch in the autumn of 1876 of a flying machine invented by a Mr. Ralph Stott of Dover. Under the heading, "A Dædalus at Dover," Punch forecasts the use of the flying machine as an engine of war. Mr. Stott, who claimed that his machine was capable of speed up to one hundred miles an hour, and of hovering in mid-air, went to Berlin to see Bismarck, but backed out of the proposed trial ascent when the German Government declined to pay him £1,000 in advance. This recalled to Punch the old story of "Twopence more and up goes the donkey"; for the rest, while suspending judgment on the invention, he observes that its use in war will constitute a "fearfully costly addition to already bloated armaments: but the cheap defence of nations is now no longer possible, and Governments, in their martial preparations, are obliged to be regardless of expense."
THE WAR-SHIP OF THE (REMOTE) FUTURE