442 POPULAR LECTURES AND ADDRESSES. 



The speaker referred to a letter he had received 

 from Mr. Canning, chief engineer of the Telegraph 

 Construction and Maintenance Company, inform- 

 ing him that it is intended to use three ships, and 

 to be provided both with cutting and with holding 

 grapnels, and expressing great confidence as to the 

 success of the attempt. In this confidence the 

 speaker believed every practical man who witnessed 

 the Atlantic operations of 1865 shared, as did also, 

 to his knowledge, other engineers who were not 

 present on that expedition, but who were well 

 acquainted with the practice of cable laying and 

 mending in various seas, especially in the Medi- 

 terranean. The more he thought of it himself, 

 both from what he had witnessed on board the 

 Great Eastern, and from attempts to estimate on 

 dynamical principles the forces concerned, the 

 more confident he felt that the contractors would 

 succeed next summer in utilising the cable partly 

 laid in 1865, and completing it into an electrically 

 perfect telegraphic line between Valencia and 

 Newfoundland. 



