Two cables from the same place in England to Denmark (Hirstals and Sondervig) of 420 and 337 miles respectively (17 and 18).

The great Northern Company has altogether twenty-two cables, of a total length of 6,110 miles.  The line from Newcastle, is worked direct to Nylstud, in Russia—­a distance of 890 miles—­by means of a “relay” or “repeater,” at Gothenburg.  The relay is the apparatus at which the Newcastle current terminates, but in ending there it itself starts a fresh current on to Russia.

The other continental connections belong to the government, and are as follows:  two cables to Germany, Lowestoft to Norderney, 232 miles, and to Emden, 226 miles (19 and 20).

Two cables to Holland:  Lowestoft to Zandvoort, laid in 1858 (21), and from Benacre, Kessingland, to Zandvoort (22).

Two cables to Belgium:  Ramsgate to Ostend (23), and Dover to Furness (24).

Four cables to France:  Dover to Calais, laid in 1851 (25), and to Boulogne (26), laid in 1859; Beachy Head to Dieppe (27), and to Havre (28).

There is a cable from the Dorset coast to Alderney and Guernsey, and from the Devon coast to Guernsey, Jersey, and Coutances, France (29 and 30).

A word now as to the instruments used for the transmission of messages.  Those for cables are of two kinds, the mirror galvanometer and the siphon recorder, both the product of Sir Wm. Thomson’s great inventive genius.

When the Calais-Dover and other short cables were first worked, it was found that the ordinary needle instrument in use on land lines was not sufficiently sensitive to be affected trustworthily by the ordinary current it was possible to send through a cable.  Either the current must be increased in strength or the instruments used must be more sensitive.  The latter alternative was chosen, and the mirror galvanometer was the result.

The principle on which this instrument works may be briefly described thus:  the transmitted current of electricity causes the deflection of a small magnet, to which is attached a mirror about three-eighths of an inch in diameter, a beam of light is reflected from a properly arranged lamp, by the mirror, on to a paper scale.  The dots and dashes of the Morse code are indicated by the motions of the spot of light to the right and left respectively of the center of the scale.

The mirror galvanometer is now almost entirely superseded by the siphon recorder.  This is a somewhat complicated apparatus, with the details of which we need not trouble our readers.  Suffice it for us to explain that a suspended coil is made to communicate its motions, by means of fine silk fibers, to a very fine glass siphon, one end of which dips into an insulated metallic vessel containing ink, while the other extremity rests, when no current is passing, just over the center of a paper ribbon.  When the instrument is in use the ink is driven out of the siphon in small drops by means of an electrical arrangement, and the ribbon underneath is at the same time caused to pass underneath its point by means of clockwork.