2g8 ON THE TRACK OF THE MAIL-COACH 



messages were sent over a gap of a mile and a half 

 as easily without a wire as with one. 



As in the old time, in America, the buffalo destroyed 

 the telegraph by using the poles planted on the plains 

 as rubbing -posts, so did a bovine foe check this 

 important advance in practical telegraphy. For a 

 Highland cow, never having seen gutta-percha before, 

 took the Morven wire, which lay upon the ground, to 

 be grazing material of superior quality, and broke the 

 circuit by taking a bite out of it. 



The Postmaster of Teignmouth had a singular ex- 

 perience when a clerk at Bristol. He was on duty at 

 the public counter, and for a moment leant his head 

 against a gas standard, when he distinctly heard the 

 telegraphic call, in the short and long sounds of the 

 Morse code, ' BS BS BS V SO,' meaning' 'Bristol, 

 Bristol, Bristol, the Southampton office wants you.' 

 Bristol answered, and the clerk below read off and 

 took down a message which was being received three 

 floors above, afterwards verifying the accuracy of 

 the transcript by a reference to the message-form in 

 the signal-room. I think that the law of acoustics, 

 rather than that of electricity, must be left to explain 

 this occurrence. 



The telegraph, of course, has its romance, when 

 sorrow is sometimes turned into joy. Has the counter 

 clerk at a certain telegraph-office in Lancashire yet 

 forgotten the blow dealt, by an ill-chosen word in a 

 telegram, to a poor Jew, whose wife had been taken 

 ill at Plymouth, and how, when he came to the 



