Submarine telegraphs were, it is said, first suggested by Salvá in 1797, and Wheatstone, in 1840, declared that it was quite possible to connect England and France by wire. Morse and Calt experimented with submarine cables in America, and Lieutenant Siemens first applied gutta-percha to the wires as an insulator in the Prussian line of telegraph across the Rhine. The English laid a wire between Dover and Calais, which was broken, but successfully relaid. And so on, till in 1857 the great project of the Atlantic cable was broached. We give illustrations of the cables; the circumstances connected with the laying of which, and the enthusiasm over the successful accomplishment of the task, must be in the memory of all. The readings of the messages were shown by delicate galvanometers, the beam of light being reflected from a mirror. This cable was lost, and in 1862 Mr. Field came over to urge the importance of the submarine cable between this country and America. The cable was shipped on the _Great Eastern_ in 1865, and was 2,186 miles long. It consisted of seven copper wires twisted, and covered with gutta-percha. The outside coating consists of ten iron wires surrounded by manilla yarn. But this cable broke, and a third was made and laid in 1866. The old cable was then recovered and spliced. There are some two hundred cables now in existence, the last being the Cape cable, laid when the Boer War was engaging our attention. The transmitting apparatus of Mr. Varley and Sir W. Thomson has greatly accelerated the rapidity of messages, and Thomson’s syphon recorder farther increased the speed. The following description of a new system is from _Scribner’s Magazine_ for 1880:— “NEW TELEGRAPHIC SYSTEM.