July 1, 1865.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



THE TELEGRAPH. 533 



Abraham set forth from his Patriarchal home till Jerusalem fell, the 

 chosen people were taught by God, at sundry times and in divers 

 manners, till all other signs were swallowed up in the Cross, and the 

 very stars shaped themselves into it in the Southern sky. 



But for us, in these later times and northern regions, telegraphy is a 

 concrete, unsymbolical, articulate thing. When the deluge assuaged, 

 God uttered His telegram, that earlier form of the Gloria in Excelsis 

 which we call the rainbow, and Noah sent forth his telegraphic mes- 

 senger, the dove, which returned with the olive leaf in its mouth. To us, 

 that first of carrier-pigeons is more significant than the rainbow, 

 though even the Ethnic Greek saw in it a divine lesson, and made Iris 

 the messenger of the gods. 



Nevertheless, our telegraphy is a divinely ordained, divinely blessed 

 thing. The thousands of miles of electric wire which already span our 

 globe, cannot fail to strike every one as the equivalents of those nerves 

 which unite in sympathy all the members of the body. The analogy is 

 no far-fetched one, but presses itself upon every thoughtful man's 

 notice. But the nervous system is the last and highest development of 

 every organism, and it shows how the world is ripening and advancing, 

 that its telegraphic wires are multiplying so fast. 



First in time, we had in our earth but the granite skeleton with its 

 ribs of basalt and flinty bones. Then the flesh-like clay and turfy 

 sward covered these, and all the arterial rivers and compensating 

 vapours flowed to and from the heart-like sea, and the respiration of the 

 mighty winds stirred the waters by their breathing. But not till now 

 have we seen the nerves sprout thick and fast, and change the half 

 sentient organism into a universally sympathetic, and as it were bound- 

 lessly intelligent being. 



What mighty things the metallic nerves of the world already are 

 you will judge from a few data. Telegraph lines now stretch from 

 Norway to the shores of Africa ; from Nova Scotia to the Gulf of 

 Mexico ; from Great Britain they spread westwards to Newfoundland, 

 and eastwards to India ; the greater part of Europe and North 

 America is netted over with them ; a considerable part of Asia and 

 Australia ; and a portion of Africa. Every week some addition is made, 

 and the day is not far distant when all the cities of the world shall be 

 as near each other in time as the churches are in one of these cities, and 

 " the electric shock of a nation's gratitude " shall be reckoned a bare 

 fact, and not a poetical simile. 



The telegraphic lines I have named, extend over more than a hundred 

 thousand miles, and include many hundred thousand miles of wire. 

 The metal in them would constitute, if massed together, a mountain 

 weighing more than fifty thousand tons. The subterranean and sub- 

 marine lines consume many hundred tons of gutta percha, besides 

 accessories. On the air lines we must count the poles as well as the 

 glass and stoneware insulators, by millions. The batteries amount to 



