dusk on strange roads — always an unwise thing to do. My Serpollet can travel very easily twenty-five miles an hour on an ordinary give-and-take road, even when fully loaded. Faster than that is not comfortable and is not necessary. Averaging twenty miles an hour and allowing two hours for meals, exercise and sight-seeing, one finds that eight hours of a winter's day are gone when one's 120 miles are finished. In the summer, when touring is of course pleasanter, one can travel two hundred miles a day with the greatest ease and without discomfort.
A very useful form of motor-car is a beaters' or luggage-car, that is to say, a long wagonette. Mr. John Scott-Montagu has pointed out, in his interesting contribution to this book, the great utility of a car for conveying beaters or loaders. I would remark that such a carriage can also be used for conveying heavy goods and guests' luggage. It would not be difficult to get one made with an omnibus top for use if necessary.
There seems to be an impression that motor-cars should all be of a certain shape. The Tonneau body is at present the most popular. As a matter of fact one can get almost any shape one wishes, but experience has proved that forms of carriage which are suitable for horse-driven vehicles are not always equally suited to motor-cars. With certain kinds of engines, too, it is difficult to adopt any other form of car than the Tonneau, or for the wet weather the Limousine. Some kind of carriage bodies are obviously heavier than others, and, therefore, take away from speed, but I regard the suppression of mere open carriages for use in warm weather only as a matter of the very near future.
Though I am the possessor of one of the most powerful motor-cars in England, I am not at all an admirer of them for ordinary use. Even with what is known as the 'throttle' system of governor, by which one can reduce the speed as much as one wishes, I consider that these heavy and powerful road engines are a mere passing freak of the hour. Their weight makes them comfortable on rough roads, but the amount of petrol required to drive them is a serious item of expense. So
