PROCEEDINGS 
OF 
THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL 
SOCIETY. 
1858—1859. No. 1. 
Ordinary Meeting, October 5th, 1858. 
Dr. J. P. Joule, Vice-President, in the Chair. 
The Chairman communicated the following extract from a 
letter received by him from Professor W. Thomson, Honorary 
Member of the Society, &c., dated Valencia, September 25th. 
“ Instead of telegraphic work, which, when it has to be done 
through 2,400 miles of submarine wire, and when its effects 
are instantaneous interchange of ideas between the old and new 
worlds, })ossesses a combination of physical, and (in the original 
sense of the word) metaphysical interest, which I have never 
found in any other scientific pursuit — instead of this, to which I 
looked forward with so much pleasure, I have had, almost ever 
since I accepted a temporary charge of this Station, only the 
dull and heartless business of investigating the pathology of 
“ faults ” in submerged conductors. A good deal that I have 
learned in this time has, I believe, a close analogy with some 
curious phenomena you have described, and which you partially 
shewed me last winter, regarding intermittent effects of resist- 
