Despite all such presentations no high personage showed himself disposed to aid Soemmering in making an extended application of his invention. The committee named by the Academy of Sciences, and in which figured Monge, Biot, and Carnot, does not seem to have made any report. The apparatus was considered of small importance alongside of that of Claude Chappe, and Napoleon himself, says Mr. Zoellner, treated the invention as a German vision. On another hand, Bavaria and Austria showed just as little enthusiasm; but Soemmering, reduced to his own resources, continued his experiments none the less on that account. On the 4th of February, 1812, he found it possible to telegraph to a distance of 4,000 feet, and on the 15th of March of the same year he operated his apparatus with complete success over a line 10,000 feet in length. This was certainly making great progress; but it is certain that, even if Soemmering had not encountered universal indifference, his telegraph would not have been able to become practical, because of the large number of wires employed. A modification, however, would have enabled it to play a role during the twenty-five years which preceded the invention of more easily realizable systems. This modification is the one Salomon Christopher Schweigger proposed in an appendix to the memoir of Soemmering inserted by him in 1811[5] in his journal, the _Polytechnisches Central--Blatt._ His proposition was that two unequal piles should be employed instead of one, so that first one and then the other, or even the two combined, should act; and, besides, that the number of wires should be reduced to two, in taking into consideration the time during which the gases were disengaged, as well as the interruptions of varying length, and to which would succeed the action, first of the larger, and then of the smaller pile. With these different modifications, it certainly would have been possible to employ but two wires, and to render the laying of the wires less costly. After Soemmering, we may cite in the same category John Redman Coxe, who, according to a note inserted in 1810 in the _Annals of Philosophy_, proposed to utilize for telegraphy the decomposition of water or metallic salts. Coxe, however, does not seem to have ever made any experiments. In 1814 John Robert Sharpe claimed likewise to have made experiments in telegraphy in 1813; and these in all probability were based upon electro-chemical action. Upon the whole, the only important one of these electro-chemical apparatus is that of Soemmering. This marks an epoch in the history of electric telegraphy, but it was not capable of the extension that can be given the apparatus based upon Oersted's discovery. [Illustration: FIG. 6.--SOEMMERING'S PERFECTED TELEGRAPH.] _To be continued_. * * * * * A NEW SULPHATE OF COPPER PILE.