22 JUNE 1844, Page 15

ATMOSPHERIC RAILWAYS.

'PEOPLE are beginning to think the atmosphere may be turned to more account than merely breathing it into their lungs. Its pres- sure has been endured, since the creation of the world to these our days, without notice : but now the thought has struck our clever men that this should be borne no longer with the laissez- fairy idleness of our ancestors. It was at first proposed to blow people through tunnels by the pressure at one end ; but they dis- liked being kept so much in the dark in these days of illumination : 'so the carriages are now placed outside the tube, and, up-hill or down-hill, the same atmosphere that presses on their bodies sends them along with a velocity that knows no bounds but that with which air rushes into void—at the rate of some thirteen thousand feet in a second. Surely this is something new under the sun.