other, the communication is stopped. It is commonly asserted and believed that many birds are killed by merely perching upon the iron wires of the electric telegraph; but at any time they can do so with perfect impunity. If, indeed, a bird could put one of his feet on the wire, and with the other manage to touch the earth, he would then, no doubt, be severely galvanised. That the railway company’s men often pick up under the wires of the electric telegraph partridges and other birds which have evidently been just killed--indeed, some are found with their heads cut off--is quite true; but these deaths and decapitations have proceeded, not from electricity, but from the birds--probably during twilight or fog--having at full speed flown against the wires, which, of course, cut _their_ heads off, just as an iron bar would cut off the head of any man or alderman on horseback who, at a full gallop, was to run foul of it. In windy weather the electric wires form an Eolian harp, which occasionally emits most unearthly music. “_I say, Jack!_” said an engine-driver to his stoker, who, like himself, was listening for the first time to this querulous sort of noise proceeding from the newly erected wires along his line, “_I say, Jack! ain’t they a giving it to ’em at Thrapstone?_” When the posts and wires of the electric telegraph between Northampton and Peterborough were being erected, an honest farmer, who for many minutes had very attentively been watching the operation, inquired of the chief superintendent to what use it was to be applied? On being informed that by its means he would in a few minutes receive _at Wellingboro’_ a list of the Mark Lane prices _in London_, he evidently incredulously asked how that was to be done; and on its being explained to him that the intelligence would be sent down to him “_letter by letter_,” he exclaimed, “But you don’t mean to say that, besides letters, it will bring down _parcels_ too?” As the rails and electric wires are now immediately before us, we cannot refrain from observing that the two inventions, like all branches of science, not only materially assist each other, but that the former, to a considerable degree, has created the latter: for instance, it may be truly said that Mr. M‘Adam materially assisted the invention of the innumerable little four-wheeled carriages which burst into existence as soon as, in consequence of good roads, it became possible for a single horse to draw a whole family. In like manner, it may, we submit, be reasonably and fairly asserted that the gradients and police of the railway have materially assisted the invention, or rather the application, of galvanic electricity to wires, which, placed along unguarded high roads, would have been practically useless.