POSTS AND WIRES OX COMMON ROADS. 



It has been contended in Europe that the wires would not be safe 

 unless placed within the railway fences. The reply to this is, 

 i hat they are found to be safe in the United States, where there is 

 a much less efficient police, even in the neighbourhood of towns, 

 and in most places no police at all. It may be observed, that the 

 same apprehensions of the destructive propensities of the people 

 have been advanced upon first proposing most of the great im- 

 provements which have signalised the present age. Thus, when 

 railways were projected, it was objected that mischievous indi- 

 viduals would be continually tearing up the rails, and throwing 

 obstructions on the road, which would render travelling so dan- 

 gerous that the system would become impracticable. 



When gas-lighting was proposed, it was objected that evil- 

 disposed persons would be constantly cutting or breaking the 

 pipes, and thus throwing whole towns into darkness. 

 ' Experience, nevertheless, has proved these apprehensions ground- 

 less ; and certainly the result of the operations on the electric 

 telegraph in the United States goes to establish the total inutility 

 of confining the course of the wires to railways. Those who have 

 been practically conversant with the system both in Europe and 

 in America, go further, and even maintain that the telegraph is 

 subject to less inconvenience, that accidental defects are more 

 easily made good, and that an efficient superintendence is more 

 easilv insured oil common roads, according to the American 

 system, than on railways. 



These reasons, combined with the urgent necessity of extending 

 the Electric Telegraph to places where railways have neither been 

 constructed nor contemplated, have led to the general departure 

 of the telegraphic wires from the lines of railway in various parts 

 of the continent. In France, particularly, almost all the recently- 

 constructed telegraphic network is spread over districts not inter- 

 sected by railways, and even where railways prevail, the wires are 

 often, by preference, carried along the common road. 



77. When channels, straits, arms of the sea, or rivers of great 

 width intervene between the successive points of a telegraphic 

 line, the conducting wires are deposited upon the bottom of the 

 water, protected from the effects of mechanical and chemical 

 action by various ingenious expedients. A considerable number 

 of such subaqueous conductors have been fabricated for telegraphic 

 lines in various countries, and others are in progress or contem- 

 plated. Before June 1854, wire ropes had been made for the 

 lines between Dover and Calais, Dover and Ostend, Dublin and 

 Holyhead, Donaghadee and Portpatrick, England and Holland, the 

 Zuyder Zee, the Great Belt (Denmark), the Mississippi, New 

 Brunswick and Prince Edward's Island, and Piedmont and Corsica. 



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