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190 OUR POSTAL-CAR SERVICE

illustrated in a heated chamber; wherever there is an opening, at the window, or even the keyhole, there is a warm current outward, and a cold current inward; and woe would be to the inhabitants of a house that would successfully stop this circulation. And thus the air of the polar regions is returned to the equatorial belt by its flow southward, in what we recognize in our latitude as the northwest wind, sliding along under the upper and warmer southwest current. 

We have a periodic oscillatory motion of this equatorial heat belt northward and southward from the true equator, manifested in the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, which gives rise to winds and rains peculiar to its motion, and in accordance to the laws of temperature as it affects the air. It also affects the temperature of the seas in its motions as manifested in the various gulf streams, but not in so great a degree, since water is not as elastic as air.


OUR POSTAL-CAR SERVICE.

An English writer, describing the changes which were wrought in the postal service of Great Britain by the introduction of railroads, and, later, in connection with these, of "traveling sorting-carriages," enthusiastically exclaims that "by means of the extra railway facilities, the letters now pass along this line (the London and Birmingham) in a space of time so inconceivably quick, that some time must elapse before our ideas become accustomed to such a rapid mode of intercourse!" At the time this was written, Palmer's famous mail coaches were yet within the memory of some of the "oldest inhabitants" of England, and Sir Rowland Hill's postal reform was an affair of only yesterday. 

The first railway post-office journey in England was made on the "Grand Junction Railway," between Liverpool and Birmingham, on the 1st of July, 1837; and it was upon the completion of this line of London, in January of the following year, that the railway post-office, or "Flying Mail," first started from the British metropolis from Birmingham. Owing to various circumstances, geographical, political, and otherwise, it was more than a quarter of a century after the success of the "Flying Mail" had been demonstrated in Great Britain, before any attempts were made in the United States to reorganize the mail service, and establish it upon a footing similar to that in England. The first vague efforts in this direction, which were simply experimental, took place under the administration of Postmaster-General Joseph Holt, who, in 1860, effected an arrangement with certain railway companies to run a mail train from New York to Boston, via Hartford and Springfield, by which the Southern mails, arriving in New York, could be immediately forwarded east, instead of lying over in the metropolis until the following day, as the practice had been. This movement may be considered as the germ of the railway postal system in this country. The following year similar facilities were secured on the line between New York and the National Capital; and two years afterwards, the Post-Office Department adopted a plan, suggested by the late Colonel George B. Armstrong, who was at that time assistant postmaster at Chicago, for putting "post-office cars" on the principal railroads, in which mail could be "made up" by clerks, while in transitu, for offices at the termini and along the lines of such roads. 

It was on the 1st of July, 1864, that the originator of this system, Colonel Armstrong, was authorized by Hon. Montgomery Blair, who was then Postmaster-General, to "test by actual experiment, upon such railroad route or routes as you may select at Chicago, the plans proposed by you for simplifying the mail service." On August 31st, of the same year, Mr. Armstrong wrote in answer to this letter as follows: "To-day I commenced the new distribution; but it will be confined to the offices on the line (the railroad between Chicago and Clinton, Iowa). This arrangement will so far test the scheme. I have no doubt of its thorough success. I will keep you advised of its progress." The first railway post-office here referred to left Chicago for Clinton on the morning of the 28th of August, 1864, on its trial trip; and on the 31st, the distribution of letters from it to stations along this route was commenced. 

This was the inauguration proper of the railway post-office system in the United States, in its present form, which differs materially from the plan proposed and partially carried into execution in 1860. To the late