be infringed. This was to the effect that electricity was conveyed at the cheapest rate through a conductor, the cost of which was such that the annual interest upon the money expended equaled the annual expenditure for lost effect in the conductor in producing the power to be conveyed. It appeared that Mr. Deprez had not followed this law in making his recent installations. Sir William Armstrong was probably first to take practical, advantage of these suggestions in lighting his house at Cragside during night time, and working his lathe and saw bench during the day, by power transmitted through a wire from a waterfall nearly a mile distant from his mansion. The lecturer had also accomplished the several objects of pumping water, cutting wood, hay, and swedes, of lighting his house, and of carrying on experiments in electro-horticulture from a common center of steam power. The results had been most satisfactory; the whole of the management had been in the hands of a gardener and of laborers, who were without previous knowledge of electricity, and the only repairs that had been found necessary were one renewal of the commutators and an occasional change of metallic contact brushes. An interesting application of electric transmission to cranes, by Dr. Hopkinson, was shown in operation. Among the numerous other applications of the electrical transmission of power, that to electrical railways, first exhibited by Dr. Werner Siemens, at the Berlin Exhibition of 1879, had created more than ordinary public attention. In it the current produced by the dynamo machine, fixed at a convenient station and driven by a steam engine or other motor, was conveyed to a dynamo placed upon the moving car, through a central rail supported upon insulating blocks of wood, the two working rails serving to convey the return current. The line was 900 yards long, of 2 ft gauge, and the moving car served its purpose of carrying twenty visitors through the exhibition each trip. The success of this experiment soon led to the laying of the Lichterfelde line, in which both rails were placed upon insulating sleepers, so that the one served for the conveyance of the current from the power station to the moving car, and the other for completing the return circuit. This line had a gauge of 3 ft. 3 in., was 2,500 yards in length, and was worked by two dynamo machines, developing an aggregate current of 9,000 watts, equal to 12 horse power. It had now been in constant operation since May 16, 1881, and had never failed in accomplishing its daily traffic. A line half a kilometer in length, but of 4 ft. 8½ in. gauge was established by the lecturer at Paris in connection with the Electric Exhibition of 1881. In this case, two suspended conductors in the form of hollow tubes with a longitudinal slit were adopted, the contact being made by metallic bolts drawn through these slit tubes, and connected with the dynamo machine on the moving car by copper ropes passing through the roof.