59. What rents do you average in the city and in the country?

60. How many hours per day do your clerks or operators work?

61. Do you employ female laborers, and if so, how and at what expense?

62. Have you ever paid damages by errors in messages? and has the responsibility ever been tried at law? and if so, please give the case.

63. Are you in the habit of sending free messages; and if so, to what extent? Also cypher messages, and what are your rules upon the subject?

64. Do you send news for the press at reduced rates?

65. Do you ever lose or mislay messages in their transmis sion; and if so, does it occur often?

66. Do you ever pay back money on account of delayed messages.

67. Do you ever give any class of messages preference in any manner?

68. Do you require pre-payment; and if not, on what kind of messages?

69. Are the operators allowed to answer messages, giving information to a patron, at a distant office?

70. How many clerks are required to attend one instrument. in a city or country office?

71. What system of telegraph do you use, and the cost of the apparatus? and if possible, please give me the early history of its invention, and by whom? Please refer to any printed authorities, if any; and also to persons who are acquainted with any facts pertaining to its early history. Please give extracts, if you have any, from newspapers, magazines, or letters in your possession, pertaining to the above points, their date, and where they can be procured or examined.

72. Do you often make mistakes in messages; and if so, what causes the same?

73. Do you usually repeat back messages? and what are your rules respecting the sending or receiving of business on the line?

74. How many messages are you in the habit of sending,

before being answered of their proper reception from the office receiving?

75. How long has the plan of insurance been in use on your line, if at all; and is it any advantage to the Company or public? and if so, what is that benefit?

76. Do you insure on messages going beyond your line, and upon what plan? Please state the details, and give the forms adopted fully, whether going on your line or beyond, or from

other lines.

77. Please give your opinions as to the use of magneto-electricity for telegraphing, and the expense of its application. How is it applied, and upon what length of circuit can it be employed?

78. Have you any mode of generating a continuous current of magneto-electricity; and do you think it could be continuously generated, giving an even or equal current, suitable for telegraphic purposes?

79. Do you work your wires charged continuously with electricity?

80. Are there any disadvantages arising from a continuous current, other than unfitness for your particular system; and if so, what are they?

81. What kind of submarine crossings do you consider the best, and how made, their cost, and by whom manufactured?

82. Do you consider there is any advantage in galvanizing the wires for cables, and to what extent?

83. Have you any facts relative to the extent of the action of the sea-water on the exterior wires? if so, please state them. 84. Do you know to what extent the sea-water acts upon the gutta percha? If any, please state the facts.

85. Do you consider there is any necessity for galvanizing the exterior wires for cables intended for fresh water crossings?

86. Please give me all the information you can as to the early history of submarine crossings, with plans and principles?

87. Supposing you needed ten conducting wires, how would you advise a cable or cables to be made?

88. Do you consider a cable of more than six conducting wires practicable; and if so, how constructed?

89. What is the weight of the cables of one, two, three, four and six wires, and the cost of each made of copper wire covered with one, two, or three coatings of gutta percha, being of Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, as marked at the gutta percha factory, embrac ing the price of the respective materials?

90. Have you any information relative to the effect of lightning upon the submarine cables?

91. How do you protect cables from the dangers of lightning?

92. At what speed can a cable be manufactured?

93. Do you know of the use of gutta percha on lines over ground, and how does it answer?

91. Supposing your line formed a circuit of two hundred miles, and there were fifty offices on that circuit, could you communicate with all the offices at one and the same time, and could they answer back respectively? And further, supposing one or more branch lines diverged from the main line at any one or more places, on which might be ten or more offices, can any one office on the main or branch lines communicate with all or any one of the offices on the main or branch line at the same time and at will, and be answered back at will? If so, by what arrangement?

95. Please state what were the first batteries used on the telegraphs in your country?

96. Please state what were the first telegraph lines erected in your country, how built, how long, when put up, when and how worked, by whom, and with what success? Also, what instruments were used on them?

97. Do you know any improvements in the art of telegraph. ing, either as to the lines or working, or as to the science not herein embraced, which would be beneficial to the enterprise if adopted?

98. Can you suggest any plan by which the telegraph can be made to serve the interest of the government of the country relative to army, police or other departments; and do you ever aid the police in the arrest of fugitives from justice?

99. Do bankers pay out money on messages from a distance, or delay protest; and are your messages recognized as evidence in court between parties as to contracts; and are your operators compelled, by law, to reveal in court the business of the line in any manner?

100. Can you give me any information relative to the early history and final invention of the different telegraphs? Please be particular, and give dates and the different stages of success, extracts from newspapers, magazines, books, etc., in which references are made to any or all of the inventions in question.

ART. IX.-ELECTRIC TELEGRAPHS IN GREAT BRITAIN.

FACTS PERTAINING TO THE SYSTEMS OF WORK AND GENERAL MANAGEMENT OF TELEGRAPHS IN ENGLAND, IRELAND, AND SCOTLAND.

BY CHARLES T. BRIGHT, ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH ENGINEER. (Answers to Mr. Shaffner's Questions.)

Answer 1st.-Both. In its most important districts, from London to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Belfast and Dublin, the wires are laid underground. In some lengths there are duplicate lines, one above the other, underground. The following will show the extent of each description of telegraph in this company's system :

UNDERGROUND WIRES.-From London to Liverpool, by Birmingham, Manchester, Bolton and Wigan, 250 miles, 10 wires. From Liverpool to Carlisle, 130 miles, 6 wires. Carlisle to Portpatrick, by Dumfries, 125 miles, 6 wires. Submarine cable from Portpatrick to Donaghadee, (22 miles,) 27 miles of cable used, 6 wires. From Donaghadee to Belfast, by Newtonards, 32 miles, 6 wires. From Belfast to Dublin, 105 miles, 6 wires. From Dumfries to Glasgow, and thence to Greenock, 115 miles, 6 wires. From Cork to Queenstown, 16 miles, 6 wires. Streetwork in London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin, and other towns, 13 miles, 12 wires, (average.) On Scottish Central, Great Northern Railway, and Haigh Colliery Lines, 8 miles, 4 wires. Total, 821 miles of line,-6,348 miles of wire.

Overground-Chiefly 6 wires.

On the Great Southern and Western Railway,........170 miles.
Midland Great Western Railway,...

Dublin, Drogheda, and Belfast Junction and Ulster

Railway Companies,..

Belfast and County Down Railway,.

Belfast and Ballymena Railway,.

Ballymena and Coleraine Railway.

..150 แ

.160

The total mileage of the company is therefore a little above 2,000 miles, and the length of wire about 13,000. The works in progress will bring the mileage to nearly 2,500 miles, and the length of wire to above 15,000 miles.

Answer 2nd.--TELEGRAPH POLES.-All the magnetic companies' poles are larch. During the first seven years of pole telegraphs, (Cook's patent for his mode of fixing wires on poles, the precursor of all other systems of poles in England, was dated September 8th, 1842, and specified in March, 1843,) the timber used was, without any exception that I know of, Memel squared timber, chamfered down the sides. A table of the dimensions of these posts is given in Highton's book. Since the end of 1850, larch has been altogether used. All the companies have adopted the round wood in preference to the Baltic cut timber, from its being cheaper and more readily obtained, and if straight and well selected, stronger than the old wood.

We have no proof of the respective durability of the two woods, save from comparison of gate-posts, &c., where the woods have been exposed, as in telegraph poles, to wet and dry, and we are led to consider that the larch poles will last much longer. None of the larch poles fixed have given way as yet, of course; but most of the square poles fixed up to the beginning of '47, have become so much decayed immediately above and about the ground, as to make it necessary to lower them, which the height of the pole above the ground (14 feet) has generally allowed. The 4 feet buried in the ground being cut away, the pole is lowered to near the same depth. It must be borne in mind, when thinking of the safety of such short poles, that in England all the pole system is by the side of railways, and within their fence, and that persons who might injure the wires if fixed so low on the high-road, have a wholesome dread of trespassing on a railway.

On a few lines where the poles have not been high enough to admit of their being thus lowered, they have been cut off at the ground, and fixed in a cast-iron screw socket-similar to the dwarf-screw piles used for breakwater fastenings, &c., patented by Mitchell.

I do not stipulate for any particlar age of timber in purchasing larch poles, but only as regards the quality and dimensions. The age of the poles we use depends very much on the district