July 1, 18G5.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



THE TELEGRAPH. 529 



In truth, is there any creature that grudges us speech or does not 

 think it a noisy superfluity 1 If you plot murder against but a colony 

 of mice who have entered your newly-built house before the plaster was 

 dry, and have eaten up, besides much else, your very title-deeds, so 

 that to the nine-tenths of possession they have added the one-tenth of 

 law, see what it comes to ! So long as the toasted cheese and baked 

 meats are innocent of poison, all are bidden to the feast ; but the 

 moment one of the colony feels poorly from a taste of arsenic or 

 strychnia, the supper-table is deserted, and the mouse-telegraph signals 

 clanger, till you confess yourself guilty of a blunder/^and consent to pay 

 the rogues their black-mail anew. 



Is it otherwise with larger animals ? the deer-stalker, the elephant- 

 hunter, the chamois-shooter, the lion-slayer have a similar tale to tell 

 us of their mightier prey. The field-naturalist more than corroborates 

 all that they tell. There is not a single tribe of social gregarious 

 animals, great or small, which has not some swift, subtle but perfect 

 system of signals, by which the wants of the community are expressed 

 and its woes cured. And even among solitary creatures, who that has 

 seen the geometric spider (to name none other) sitting at the central 

 bureau and receiving station of his extensive telegraphic system, and as 

 signal succeeds signal along the radii of his spoke-like lines, has not 

 thought he heard him reading off the symbols " fly market tight," 

 " blue-bottles looking up," " midges easy," " thunder in the air." 



Man then is not distinctively a telegraphic animal, neither is he 

 preeminent as such. Bat he is a telegraphic creature in a way no 

 mere animal is or can be. If you sum up the motives which lead the 

 lower animals to practise their telegraphy, I imagine that you will con- 

 cur with me in thinking, that they are mainly three, namely, hunger, 

 love, and war. Of the first, take as one example, as good perhaps as 

 any, the organised mode in which a pack of wild dogs hunt down an 

 antelope swifter than any one of them. The whole pack follows, but 

 not at a common pace. The hard running is done by a few swift-footed 

 leaders who relieve each other at intervals, signalling for help in a very 

 effective, though rather mysterious way. 



Of love need I say anything ? who is there that has watched the 

 birds from St. Valentine's day onwards, through their courtships, 

 weddings, lovers' quarrels, house-buildings, welcoming of the small 

 strangers, nursing the heirs and heiresses, and sending the young people 

 forth into the world, and is not familiar with the wondrous ways in 

 which they silently speak to each other J 



As for war, let the stags at this moment fighting with each other, 

 and belling defiance across the Highland hills, and all the other pugna- 

 cious male animals in the world testify, that without trumpet or drum , 

 herald's flag, or champion's gage of battle, they can throw down and 

 take up the gauntlet, announce a Casus Belli, and proclaim peace and 

 war as perfectly, and with far less needless diplomacy than we. Take 



