July 1, 18.65.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



THE TELEGRAPH. 537 



a travelling or locomotive man, animal, or engine ; or, on the other, 

 an imponderable physical agency or mechanical force. 



A symbol carried by conscious or unconscious living agents is 

 perhaps the oldest form of telegraph ; and when we replace the living 

 carrier, human or animal, by a locomotive machine guided by man, we 

 have the most modern form but one before reaching the electric 

 telegraph. 



Although, however, the distinction is arbitrary and shadowy, it is 

 convenient to exclude from our definition a spoken message, whether it 

 has been orally delivered by a traveller who has singly marched with it 

 from its utttrer to its receiver, or has been carried by relays of men 

 from the one to the other ; and also to exclude a written message 

 similarly conveyed or transferred by a locomotive machine, which con- 

 stitutes our modern postage system. In reality, to telegraph is to 

 speak to a distance, or to write to a distance, and so is essentially a 

 division of language ; but for the sake of brevity it is desirable to omit 

 spoken words and written epistles from our present consideration. 



The rapid transmission of a symbol has been the practice of all 

 nations. As illustration, take that striking example from the history 

 of the Hebrews recorded in the close of the Book of Judges, where the 

 wronged Levite whose wife has been foully abused and murdered, cuts 

 her dead body into twelve pieces, and sends one to each tribe of Israel 

 to summon it, sword in hand, to avenge the crime. Or take that 

 ancient custom of our own country, celebrated by Sir Walter Scott in 

 the Lady of the Lake, where the Fiery Cross was sent through the 

 Highlands to summon the Clans to arms. Or take that current custom 

 in the East, perhaps at this moment in vogue, which roused the Sepoys 

 to mutiny by sending from district to district a piece of bread, or a 

 particular flower, and which nearly won the day against our electric 

 telegraph. 



Examples might be multiplied endlessly, for it has never been 

 difficult for men to devise or interpret symbols, which in the absence of 

 written or spoken words should convey their meaning to each other. 



• The great difficulty is to traverse space and time with the symbol ; 

 to give meaning to the first four, not the last five, letters of the word 

 tele-graph. 



Now the swiftness of man's foot can do much for us, and still 

 more the swiftness of the horse, or the camel, as witness the feat of 

 the Tartar couriers in carrying to Europe the news of the Chinese 

 treaty. And when these fail us we can employ the wings of the carrier- 

 pigeon, and when it flags the steamer and the railway locomotive will 

 take up the running for us. But all are too slow for a generation so fast 

 as ours. We will not give our kingdom for a horse, not even a horse 

 with wings. The only agents that can tempt us are sound, or light, or 

 electricity ; and the first is so much slower than the last two, that we 

 use it only for short distances 

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