The second of the two great cycle shows which are always held a few weeks befure Christmas—the Stanley and the National—closes at the Crystal Palace to-morrow and the enormous crowds which have visited them afford ample evidence that the so-called "cycle craze" is by no means dying out. And what mikes the interest in the two shows the more remarkable is that there has been no really valuable novelty to be seen at either show. One passes between endless rows of bicycles, all built to the same pattern, or at least! showing only such slight deviations of pattern that one has to be an expert in order to notice where they differ. There are a few fresh devices for substituting some other system of gearing for the chain, but they are remarkably like the old ones which have again and again proved inferior to the chain. There are some little improvements in brakes and other accessories; but in the bicycle itself there are none worth mentioning. One would be tempted to say that the bicycle has now reached the ughest degree of development of which'it capable did not one remember that this is the exact judgment which a few years ago was passed on the old solid-tired high bicycle which now is almost as extinct as the dodo.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.