In 1837, when Queen Victoria was just beginning her long reign, the telegraph began to do practical work. Cooke and Wheatstone started a system in London, with instruments having five little needles bobbing about, by which the signals were read. Five wires had to be strung between the two stations, but the system was soon improved so that only one was required. This telegraph very early in its life received a splendid advertisement by causing the arrest of a murderer, who otherwise might have escaped. He was travelling to London after his crime, and expected to lose himself among the crowds of the city. But it so happened that a trial of the telegraph was being made along the very line of railway. His description was telegraphed to London, and he stepped from the train into the arms of the police. At the same time that Cooke and Wheatstone were working in England, Morse was hard at work in America. His system was very complete and practical, and, once he was able to give it a fair trial in public, it was received with great enthusiasm in this country and all over the world. The instrument that makes the furious rattling you hear in the halls of all the hotels is Morse's instrument. Morse's first public trial was made in 1844--fifty-three years ago. After that telegraph lines were built up very quickly in all parts of the world. Many clever men took up the work, and invented methods and devices for improving the systems, and to-day the extent of the telegraph lines of the world and the amount of work done are simply stupendous. To give just two examples: In the early years of the telegraph the lines were quite short, and only a few words could be signalled in a minute. To-day a line is building from Cairo to Cape Town, the clear length of the African continent, and there are in daily use automatic instruments which send long press messages at the rate of 450 words a minute. In sending by hand forty words a minute is quite a common speed. As soon as land telegraphs were fairly started men said, why not lay wires under the sea? Why not? So in 1850 they laid a wire under the English Channel, from Dover to Calais. It was a very short-lived line, because the day after it was laid a French fisherman picked it up with his anchor, and knowing nothing about telegraphs, and caring less, cut it in two to clear his miserable anchor. The next year they laid a strong cable, sheathed with iron wires, proof against fishermen's knives. That worked splendidly, and they say that parts of that same cable are still working under the Channel. Of course it has been often repaired and pieced out with new, but it shows what sturdy offspring an infant can have when a submarine wire forty-five years old still does service.