JTOUCH of European life has been given to New York and Philadelphia during the past summer by the introduction of a new means of public passenger transportation -the motor omnibus. Beginning about the middle of July, fifteen new 'buses like those shown in one of the accompanying illustrations, were put in service on Fifth avenue to take the place of the venerable horse stages that have been a feature of New York's fashionable thoroughfare from the time of the Civil war.

The innovation became popular at once despite the ten-cent fare on a route that is less than five miles long. Summer visitors to the metropolis have been quick to take advantage of this means of seeing the sights along Fifth avenue from Washington square to Central park and at the same time enjoying the experience of riding in a motor omnibus-one of the first lot introduced into the United States. Almost every pleasant afternoon all of the seats on all of the 'buses are filled on each trip, and when the seats are all occupied no more passengers are taken aboard, wherein the new service differs essentially and most agreeably

from the notorious elevated and subway railroad systems of the city. The motor 'buses seat thirty-four passengers, sixteen inside and eighteen on the upper deck. They run smoothly and quietly, on solid rubber tires, and average ten miles an hour, including stops to take on and discharge passengers. They are operated on a regular schedule calling for a round trip in one hour, with a five-minute lay-over at either end of the route, while the schedule for the old horse stages allowed an hour and a half for the round tripand the new power vehicles easily keep to the schedule

All of the Fifth avenue 'buses were imported from London, having been purchased from the English agents of a factory in France, where they were built. Only the running gear and machinery were imported. The bodies were built in Philadelphia after the patterns of the foreign bodies. The steel frames, twenty-four horse-power, four-cylinder gasoline engines mounted vertically over the front axles under metal bonnets; the sliding gear, change-speed mechanisms

and the side chain drive system, all follow the general lines of accepted practice in touring car design.

That the undertaking to run motor 'buses in New York is not of an experimental or temporary nature is conclusively indicated by two significant facts the sale at auction early in August of the entire two hundred head of horses and forty-five old stages that comprised the former equipment of the company, and the placing of contracts for ten additional motor omnibuses of a new type to be built in the United States to specifica

tions furnished by the engineers of the company. This clearly marks the final passing of a form of transportation that dates back seventy-five years, even antedating the horse-drawn street cars whose last lingering relics are today one of the remarkable sights in our city of greatest contrasts. When the ten additional 'buses have been completed and delivered the route on which they will run will be greatly extended.

Almost simultaneously with the introduction of New York's motor omnibus service, a similar line was established in Philadelphia where fourteen vehicles

ning gear and machinery being made in Philadelphia by a big motor-truck building concern. Instead of being driven by gasoline engines, like the great majority of foreign omnibuses, their motive force. is electricity, derived from a storage battery carried under the middle of the body. body. The current is utilized in four electric motors of two and one-half horsepower, each driving direct to one of the four road wheels-a unique form of construction. The manufacturing company is rushing work on the remainder of a lot of fifty of these 'buses intended for the Philadelphia service,

closely those of the old Broad Street Omnibus and Sleigh Company, which had to work for an equal length of time to secure the privilege of starting its horse stages running in 1870. That company had an equipment in those days of one hundred and fifty head of horses and forty-six coaches, with a capitalization of $60,000. The same arguments against the running of its stages were advanced thirty-seven years ago as were brought forward in opposition to the franchise of the motor omnibus company, which illustrates very forcibly how slowly we make progress.

Nearly 1,000 omnibuses are now operated in London by a score of different companies. A few of them are propelled by steam, but the great majority are of the internal combustion engine type utilizing gasoline or kerosene. They are making heavy inroads on the patronage of the steam and electric railroads, more than 184,000,000 passengers having been carried last year by the 800 motor 'buses

then in use, representing an excess of 4,000,000 passengers over the total number transported by the tram 'system of the British capital during the same period.

It is reasonable to believe that we are now on the eve of a radical change in the matter of urban and interurban transportation that will be brought about by the perfection of the motor vehicle. One needs but to see the new motor omnibus rolling rapidly and quietly along the asphalted street, turning out for slowmoving vehicles or broken down carts without slackening speed, and compare them with the noisy trolley cars with their enormously expensive tracks and conduits, for the laying and repairing of which the streets have to be torn up every year, and then think of the gigantic central power houses, to make up his mind that the trackless vehicle with its own independent power plant has enough. in its favor to insure it a permanent place in twentieth century civilization.

AUSING sleep by the use of electricity has been successfully accomplished at the School of Medicine at Nantes, France, by Professor Stephen Leduc, a thing said to be of great importance in surgical operations.

The accompanying illustration shows the electrical equipment and method of application by this French scientist as employed in his experiments with rabbits and dogs, similar results. having been recorded for persons undergoing opera

tions, and successful experiments having been made upon Professor Leduc himself. It is stated that the discovery proceeded from study of the effects of intermittent currents and from the knowledge that the skull and brain offer but little resistance to the currents. With periods of only one one-hundredth of a second, the current intensity is applied on for one-tenth of the period, and off nine-tenths of the period, the interruption being timed by a commutator or electric motor-driven interrupter. It is stated that for a human being a current of thirty-five volts and four milliamperes