Page 2 Advertisements Column 3

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 776, 20 March 1905, Page 2

The Cradle Of the Cycle.

As we rida on our bicycle i with the greatest comfort along our beautiful country roads with, perhaps, huge overhanging trees or ferns lending a charm and beauty to our surroundings and a wave of gratitude to our machine passes over us, how many know, and, shuddering, remember, that once when the bicycle was in its wooden stage, it narrowly escaped death. Yet it is so. And what averted eo great a national disaster ? Do wc. realise, as we spin along, that it was Cov- | entry, the cradle of the cycle, that' saved the bicycle's life; Coventry that came to the fore, came to the rescue with the india-rubber tyre, and carefully nursed that mercurial I infant in its critical illness, back to vigorous life, to become the parent of a long line of robust roadsters. In the famous year of '97 the Americans invaded England with their bicycle—an attempt to damage the British industry. Bicycles in thousands were landed from America. And what happened. Coventry again rushed to the rescue, awoke to the danger of this invasion, and it was the Rudge-Whitworbh Co. that was first and foremost in the light. It was due to the superhuman efiforts of this firm that the invasion was checked. Beaten, buffeted, broken in the fight, they returned to America. It was a triumph for the firm of Rudge-'Whitworth, and made them at once the acknowledged leaders of cycle manufacture throughout the British Empire,

S. Clark & Co. FUNERAL FURNISHERS ANX> UNDERTAKERS. D«Tom-«treet Kast ... New Plymouth. Charge* Hoderat*.