SWEEPING MACHINES. Mr. Whit worth's street-sweeping machine deserves to be more extensively adopted than it has yet been; for its operations are more expeditious and more effective than those ordinarily adopted. It was introduced about eight or nine years ago at Manchester. There had before been invented road-scraping machines ; but the sweeping machine superseded them. The machine consists of a cart, to the hinder part of which is an endless chain of brushes or brooms, inclining doWriwards to the ground. The motion of the wheels causes other wheels within the machine to rotate; and these minor wheels act upon the brushes, causing each brush in turn to sweep over the surface of the ground, and to carry up its portion of dirt into the cart. Sloping boards are so adjusted as to facilitate the transfer of the dirt into the cart. The sweepings from 800 to 4000 square yards of street or road suffice to fill the cart, according to the previous state of the ground as to cleanliness. It has been calculated that one of these machines, drawn by two horses, can sweep 24,000 square yards, ou on average, per day—a quantity equal to that which twenty men could cleanse in the same time.
Mr. Whitworth patented, in 1849, a new arrangement of the brushes ; they are attached to the lower stuface of a horizontal disc, which has a revolving motion given to it round a vertical axis, by machinery connected with the ordinary wheels of the cart.
Another street-sweeping machine was patented by Mr. Walker, in 1849. It consists of a cart on four wheels, the front pair of which give motion to two channel brushes, one on each sido; while the hinder pair give motion to a large roller brush, as long as the width of the machine. The action of these three brushes is such as to collect the dirt of the street into . parallel ridges ; and another apparatus then comes into work. This appa ratus is something like Whitworth's in re spect to sweeping the dirt up a sloping board into a receptacle ; but there is also an endless chain of buckets which lifts the dirt from the receptacle into a cart temporarily attached to the machine. The whole contri vance is much more complicated than Whit worth's.