The eye can readily perceive the eight different positions in which one of the pointers is represented [on the plate attached to the article in the "Transactions," but here omitted]. Of these eight positions seven only are employed to denote figures, the upright position of the hand or pointer being reserved to represent o, or zero. The figures thus denoted refer to a vocabulary in which all the words are numbered. Of the four pointers, that which appears to the left hand of the observer represents thousands; the others hundreds, tens, and units, in succession, as in common numeration. [By these means, as Mr. Edgeworth showed, numbers from 1 up to 7,777, omitting those having a digit above 7, could be displayed to the distant observer, who on referring to his vocabulary discovered that they meant such expressions as it might seem convenient to transmit by this excellent invention.] Although the electric telegraphs have long since superseded telegraphs of this class in public use, the young people of Colonel Ingham's class took great pleasure in the next summer in using Mr. Edgeworth's telegraph to communicate with each other, by plans easily made in their different country homes. It may interest the casual reader to know that the first words in the first message transmitted on the telegraph between Scotland and Ireland, alluded to above, were represented by the numbers 2,645, 2,331, 573, 1,113 244, 2,411, 6,336, which being interpreted are,-- "Hark from basaltic rocks and giant walls," and so on with the other lines, seven in number. This is Mr. Edgeworth's concise history of telegraphy before his time. The art of conveying intelligence by sounds and signals is of the highest antiquity. It was practised by Theseus in the Argonautic expedition, by Agamemnon at the siege of Troy, and by Mardonius in the time of Xerxes. It is mentioned frequently in Thucydides. It was used by Tamerlane, who had probably never heard of the black sails of Theseus; by the Moors in Spain; by the Welsh in Britain; by the Irish; and by the Chinese on that famous wall by which they separated themselves from Tartary. * * * * * All this detail about Mr. Edgeworth's telegraph resulted in much search in the older encyclopædias. Quite full accounts were found, by the young people, of his system, and of the French system afterwards employed, and worked in France until the electric telegraph made all such inventions unnecessary. Before the next meeting, Bedford Long, who lived on Highland Street in Roxbury, and Hugh, who lived on the side of Corey Hill, were able to communicate with each other by semaphore; and at the next meeting they arranged two farther stations, so that John, at Cambridge, and Jane Fortescue, at Lexington, were in the series. There being some half an hour left that afternoon, the children amused themselves by looking up some other of Mr. Edgeworth's curious experiments and vagaries.