day when it ceased to work, no less than four hundred messages were actually transmitted:  one hundred and twenty-nine from Valentia to Trinity Bay, and two hundred and seventy-one from Trinity Bay to Valentia.  The curious reader may find copies of all these messages chronologically set down in this volume.  Mr. Prescott expresses entire confidence in the restoration of telegraphic communication between the two hemispheres.  It may be reasonably doubted, however, if direct submarine communication will ever be resumed.  Two other routes are suggested as more likely to become the course of the international wires.  One is that lately examined by Sir Leopold M’Clintock and Captain Young, under the auspices of the British Government.  This route, taking the extreme northern coast of Scotland as its point of departure, and touching the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland, strikes our continent upon the coast of Labrador, making the longest submarine section eight hundred miles, about one-third the length of the Atlantic cable.  There is not a little doubt, however, as to the practicability of this route; and as the British Government has already expended several hundred thousand pounds in experimenting upon submarine cables, it is not likely that it will venture much more upon any project not holding out a very absolute promise of success.  What seems more likely is, that our telegraphic communication with Europe will be made eventually through Asia.  Even now the Russian Government is vigorously pushing its telegraphic lines eastward from Moscow; and its own interest affords a strong guaranty that telegraphic communication will soon be established between its commercial metropolis and its military and trading posts on the Pacific border.  A project has also recently taken form to establish a line between Quebec and the Hudson Bay Company’s posts north of the Columbia River.  With the two extremes so near meeting, a submarine wire would soon be laid over Behring’s Straits, or crossing at a more southern point and touching the Aleutian Islands in its passage.

Two of the chapters of this work will be recognized by readers of the “Atlantic” as having first appeared in its pages,—­a chapter upon the Progress and Present Condition of the Electric Telegraph in the various countries of the world, and a description of the Electrical Influence of the Aurora Borealis upon the Working of the Telegraph.  These, with a curiously interesting chapter upon the Various Applications of the Telegraph, and an amusing miscellaneous chapter showing that the Telegraph has a literature of its own, complete the chief popular elements of the volume.  The remainder is devoted mainly to a technical treatise on the proper method of constructing telegraphic lines, perfecting insulation, etc.  In an Appendix we have a more careful consideration of Galvanism, and a more detailed examination of the qualities and capacities of the various batteries.