What are we to say of the _torpedo_, and its management by electricity? This is really a wonderful subject, the influence of which on future naval warfare even the most skilled and experienced officers can only dimly surmise. We know that during the civil war in America, the Federal torpedoes wrought more destruction on the Confederate ships than all the guns in the Federal fleet; that, on the other hand, the Confederate torpedoes so effectually guarded the approach to Richmond up James River, that a hostile flotilla was compelled to retire baffled and disappointed. One unlucky Federal ship unwittingly passed over a submerged torpedo at the moment of explosion. And with what result? 'The hull of the ship was visibly lifted out of the water, the boiler exploded, the smoke-funnels were carried away, and the crew projected into the air with extreme velocity. Out of the crew of one hundred and twenty-seven men, only three remained alive--the vessel itself being blown to atoms.' The arrangements have been so much improved since that time, that messages can be sent across a river or estuary from shore to shore through the very wire which is to discharge the torpedo! In every naval war during the last few years, torpedoes have been more or less employed. In what way the weaker Russian fleet has been able to baffle the stronger fleet of the Turks in the struggle of 1877, the newspapers have told us in full detail. There is no necessity for pursuing this part of the subject further, seeing that it was lately treated with some degree of fullness in our pages. But the greatest marvel of all, in regard to the application of electricity to warlike purposes, is the _electric telegraph_. We know what service the lightning-messenger renders to society generally in the peaceful daily maintenance of commercial and social intercommunication; and military men now know what a potent instrument it is in the conduct of field-operations and siege-works. An officer well qualified to judge affirms that the memorable Franco-German War, so disastrous to France, could not have been carried on without the aid of the electric telegraph by the German forces. The warlike struggles engaged in by various European powers in the Crimea, in India during the Mutiny, in China, in New Zealand, in the Austro-Italian provinces, in Morocco by the Spaniards, in America by the Federals and the Confederates, in Holstein during the brief Dano-German War, in Bohemia during the still briefer Austro-Prussian War, in Abyssinia, in France during the struggle against the Germans, in Ashanti--all these were marked by the adoption of the electric telegraph to a greater or less extent.