Fig. 894.—The bicycle toy.
The swimming-fish (fig. 895) is moved by an indiarubber spring, much as the drawing-room kite is elevated in the air. The spring of indiarubber is twisted to make the fish swim, and the caoutchouc is adapted to a toothed wheel which has a clock-work motion that gives the tail a motion sideways and round, acting like a propeller, and thus the fish swims.
Fig. 895.—The fish.
It is perhaps as well to say how these fish are managed, because then children will not break them, when they have been purchased, to see what is inside. Very young students are very fond of analyses of this nature, but synthesis, or putting together, is a far superior occupation in these circumstances to analysis, and to put together more lawful than to pull asunder.
Tree-felling by Steam.
The machine constructed a few years ago by Messrs. Ransome, and which was tried at Roupell Park, near London, seems to combine all the desiderata in the matter of mechanical tree-felling. Many experiments have been previously made by people to cut down trees by means of steam machinery, but none of them included all the conditions necessary for success. The Ransome Machine cut down four large trees in forty minutes.
