We should like to hear of Government experimenting with rockets and mortars, with a view to their improvement. Often the safety of a whole ship’s company has depended upon the strength of a light cord, attached to a rocket, which has been lying in store for years; often it has happened that this very cord has been _just_ a few feet too short! or has snapped, or has got entangled, or something else equally simple, but equally fatal. Let us look also to our _quasi_ life-boats, some so heavy that they cannot be launched, or so dangerous as to drown their own crews—some constructed one way, some another—none on any recognised and universal principle. We are very proud of our name of Englishmen, and lay the flattering unction to our soul, that we are a highly civilised and reasonable community; but whilst we grow magniloquent in praises of our country and her commerce, we forget that we owe it all to the poor Jack Tar, for whose life and comfort we don’t seem to care a fig. Else why have these inquiries not been before instituted? What is the use of our Trinity Boards, and Ballast Boards, and Lighthouse Boards, and all other Boards, if the seaman is not to know one light from another when he sees it, or if it is to be placed so that he _cannot_ see it? What is the use of our keeping up a Hydrographic department, at an expense little short of thirty thousand a-year, if the surveys, and charts, and valuable data, the result of its labours, are to be so little appreciated? The truth is, that the masters of many of the mercantile marine are incapable of taking advantage of them, and of other improvements in nautical science, from incompetence. We trust, however, that the bill intended to remedy _that_ defect, lately introduced by the Ministry into the House of Commons, will, if passed, have the desired object. Although it has been abandoned “at this late period of the session” out of respect to the approaching 12th of August and 1st of September, we trust it will be taken up again soon after the next meeting of Parliament. WINGED TELEGRAPHS. Magnetic Electricity for telegraphic purposes has nearly superseded pigeons. Till very recently a regular “service” of Carrier Pigeons existed between London and Paris, for the quick conveyance of such intelligence as was likely to affect the funds. The French capital was the focus of the system, in exemplification of the adage that “all roads lead to Paris,” and pigeon expresses branched off in all directions from that city even to St. Petersburg. Relays of them are still kept up between Paris and Madrid, besides a few other places. The most celebrated relays of winged messengers were those which bore intelligence between Antwerp, Brussels, and Paris. In the former city a society of pigeon fanciers, for amusement and emulation, keeps up an establishment of them. Their doings are amusingly chronicled in Kohl’s last book of Travels, _Reisen in den Neiderlanden_.