184 
distant from the school at which his brothers were receiving 
their education, he set about devising a method by which 
they might communicate with each other. Claude sug- 
gested that by means of the flat black rulers they might, 
upon the white exterior walls of the one school, describe 
figures that would be visible by the help of a lorgnette at 
the other. The figures, of course, had an arbitrary value 
previously agreed upon, and answering to certain phrases 
in their schoolboy vocabulary. This youthful freak had 
probably vanished from his mind when, as a man, he began 
to study the problem of distance-signalling, for his first 
thoughts were turned in the direction of electricity ; after- 
wards he tried combinations of colours, then experimented 
with sounds, and finally recurring to his early experience, 
invented the telegraph which became so efficient an aid to 
the armies of France. When electricity was employed 
nothing was more natural than to call the new apparatus 
the electric telegraph, and as it superseded the invention of 
Chappe the qualifying adjective became unnecessary, and 
the old name became applied solely to the new thing. 
Mr. R. E. CcTNLiFFE exhibited two slides of Fossil Diatoms 
from the London clay, discovered by Mr. Schrubsole, and 
mounted by Mr. Cole. 
