the abominable "running up stairs." We think it may fairly supersede the speaking tube, and be usefully employed at the Carlton, Reform, and other large clubhouses. It may also be useful in private establishments: for instance, a fond mamma may order the nurse-maid to put the children to bed, without calling up the girl, or rising from her seat at table. In this way may be constructed a complete code of domestic mandates, such as, "Bring up the news," "Dinner at five," "Ice the champagne, "Order the carriage," &c. A telegraph in the hall may announce the name of every visitor, who may, without "knock and ring," thereon announce himself; and an instantaneous reply so given, be either "Ask him up," or "Not at home."

ECCENTRIC USE OF THE TELEGRAPH.

ALBERT SMITH, in one of his facete "Tracts for the Trains," in the Illustrated London News, suggests the following:

"An ingenious musician, who goes up and down daily between London and a country station, proposes to establish another class on the line, besides the first, second, and third-that for learning the cornet-àpiston, which popular instrument produces great illfeeling between lodgers, when taught in-doors; indeed, to indulge in the worst pun we ever recognised, a cornet may be succeeded by a left-tenant.

"The medium of tuition will be the wires of the electric telegraph. On these, being five, notes will be

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fastened by non-conducting materials, and the pupils will play them as they travel. The andante movements will be placed close to the stations, where progress is slow, and the tunes will be so arranged as to finish at all the stoppages. These will be constantly changed, to extend the benefit to all classes: for instance, galoppes will be chosen for the express trains ; sets of quadrilles for the stopping ones; and marches, or dirges, for the luggage trains. At the same time, the passengers, generally, will be diverted with agreeable harmony. The invention is registered."

Thereupon, a quasi Correspondent writes to protest against this mode of teaching the cornet-à-piston. "The great objection," he maintains, "is, that the notes once passed could never be taken up again, and especially the high ones; for, before the pupil could get his lips to the necessary embouchure, he would be a mile beyond the bar. A non-musical friend, given to senseless ribaldry, suggests that fugues should be chosen for the music; because, as he says, those compositions never appear to have beginning, end, middle, or anything else, and may be commenced or left off anywhere with equal effect. But herein does he show his lack of common sense, and overplus of absurd irreverence." The letter then continues :

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'It would be better, sir, for you to confine yourself to practical improvements than ingenious but futile schemes. There is a point of far greater importance to railway travellers, connected with the electric telegraph wires, to which attention ought to be called. It is this: After my entertainments given in the coun

try, I am usually asked to supper by certain of the leading inhabitants, in gratitude for the amusement I have afforded them; and, from drinking healths, I rise next morning with a dizziness. And then, on my return to town, are the wires of the electric telegraph most dreadful. They go up and down, down and up, for miles and miles, until at last, seeing nothing else, I begin to think that they are stationary, and it is the carriage which is undulating; and this has such an effect, that I am as indisposed upon arriving at the terminus as if I had just crossed the Channel. A little care on the part of the directors can remedy this. Why cannot the wires be turned upright, like those of a piano? Pray recommend this, and oblige your constant reader, COUNTERPOINT.

"N.B.-The ignorance of the rustics down the lines is dreadful. They cannot be persuaded but that the electric telegraph is a set of wires, which the clerks in London pull to ring bells at Slough."

SENDING FOR A PHYSICIAN.

THE lamented Joseph John Gurney was seized with his fatal illness when at his seat, Eartham, near Norwich, early in 1847. On the morning of January 4th, a message was sent by telegraph from Norwich, at six o'clock, to London, for a physician to attend immediately. At a quarter before ten, he arrived by a special train, the whole time occupied in conveying the message and bringing the required aid being but three.

hours and three quarters; the special railway engine performing the distance from Shoreditch to Norwich in three hours and a quarter.

ELECTRO-TELEGRAPHIC STORM.

M. BREGUET, in a letter to M. Arago, records the following remarkable instance of the electric telegraph being interrupted by atmospheric electricity.

It appears that one afternoon, at five o'clock, during a heavy fall of rain, the bells of the electric telegraph, placed in a small shed at one end of the St. Germain's Atmospheric Railway, began to ring, which led the attendant to suppose that he was about to receive a communication. Several letters then made their appearance; but finding they conveyed no meaning, he was about to make the signal "Not understood,” when suddenly he heard an explosion, similar to a loud pistol-shot, and at the same time a vivid flash of light was seen to run along the conductors placed against the sides of the shed. The conductors were broken into fragments, which were so hot as to scorch the wooden tables on which they fell, and their edges presented evident traces of fusion. The wires of several electromagnets, belonging to the apparatus placed in the shed, were also broken; and at the same instant the attendant experienced a violent concussion, which shook his whole frame. The shed is placed in connexion with the Paris station by wires supported on posts; yet at Paris nothing was broken, nothing remarkable oc

curred, except that several of the bells were heard to ring. But at a short distance from the shed, the top of one of the posts which support the wire was split; and where the wires were bent from a vertical into a horizontal direction at the corners of the angles, three branches (aigrettes) of light were observed several seconds after the explosion.

At the time of the explosion, an attendant, who was holding a handle which moves a needle at a short distance from the extremity of the railway, sustained all over the body a violent concussion; and several workmen, standing about him, also experienced severe shocks.

In M. Breguet's opinion, the explosion came from the railway; for, on account of the immense quantity of metal employed in its construction, and the extent of its surface, it is very probable that, during a thunderstorm, it may be the seat of an intense electric tension; and that the fluid thus attracted may discharge itself on the telegraphic wires, which are near the iron rails, tubes, needles, &c.

THE TELEGRAPH AS A FIRE LOOK-OUT, AND FOR COMMUNICATING TO ENGINE-STATIONS.

THERE are, probably, none of the occurrences of everyday calamity and life to which the telegraph may be more usefully applied than as a fire-escape and alarum. It is notorious, and indeed unavoidable, that under the existing necessarily tardy system, fires frequently become too furious for quenching by the time that the