360 POPULAR LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 



give it a trial." The American Navy depart- 

 ment looked upon the matter with different 

 eyes, and certainly treated my proposal in a 

 very different spirit. They found my ap- 

 paratus full of defects. They never asked me 

 to perfect it, but they perfected it in their 

 own way, and obtained excellent results. I 

 went on independently in another line, and made 

 a considerably different apparatus from that 

 which is now being used by the Americans ; 

 but I certainly was very much struck by the 

 greal zeal and the great ability which the 

 American naval officers showed in taking up 

 a thing of this description, which had merely 

 been proved to be good, and charged them- 

 selves with improving the details and making 

 it a workable process. 



If I may be allowed two or three minutes 

 longer, I will describe the method of making 

 flying-soundings with wire. In the first Hooper 

 expedition, to lay the first section of the 

 Western and Brazilian Company's cable from 

 Pernambuco to Para, the Brazilian Govern- 



