The electric light is not free from danger; but, from not being explosive, it is far from being as fatal in its effects as gas. There have been several deaths from electric shock caused by the very powerful currents of the Brush and Jablochkoff machines. For instance, a man was killed instantly on board the late Czar’s yacht _Livadia_ when crossing the Bay of Biscay. He had accidentally grasped the bare connections of one of the electric lamps and received the current through his breast. Others have been killed by touching bare wires conveying the current; a man in Kansas City, United States, met his death quite recently in repairing some electric light wires without knowing that the current flowed in them. Carelessness of some kind was the source of these misfortunes; but the use of such very deadly currents is to be deprecated. When the electromotive force of an electric current exceeds five hundred volts it becomes dangerous, and hence it is that the Board of Trade prohibits the use of more powerful currents for general lighting. The use of overhead wires, sometimes uninsulated and never wholly insulated, such as obtains in some parts of the United States, ought also to be eschewed, and underground cables, safe out of harm’s way, employed instead. With cables buried in the earth, we should not have a repetition of the curious incident which recently happened at the Luray Cavern in Virginia, where lightning ran into the cave along the electric light conductors and destroyed some of the finest stalactites. The plan of having tall masts with a cluster of very powerful lights reflected from the height by mirrors is a very good one, since it obviates the distribution of wires and lamps. By imitating the sun, in this way a Californian town is entirely lighted from one or two masts; and it is satisfactory to know that the system is being tried at South Kensington. The dynamos of electric machines have been known to explode, or rather burst from the centrifugal force due to the rapid revolution of the armature. An accident of this kind recently caused great alarm in a New York theatre. Sparks from the red-hot carbons of arc-lamps, or between wire and wire of the conductors, have also led to many small fires; but none of any great consequence. A spark is so feeble a source of heat that, unlike the spilling of an oil-lamp, it does not produce a powerful fire, provided the materials it falls among are not highly inflammable. On the whole, the danger of fire with electric lighting, especially incandescence lighting, has probably been exaggerated. The incandescence lamp itself is very safe, since if one be enveloped in light dry muslin and broken, the muslin is not burnt. In fact, the rush of air caused by the broken vacuum entirely dissipates the red-hot filament.