View (looking aft) from the port paddle-box of Great Eastern: Showing the trough for cable, etc. 62 The forge on deck; Night of August 9: Preparing the iron plating for capstan 63 Searching for fault after recovery of the cable from the bed of the Atlantic, July 31 72 In the bows, August 2: The cable broken and lost: Preparing to grapple 73 Getting out one of the large buoys for launching, August 2 80 General view of Port Magee, &c., from the heights below Cora Beg: The Caroline laying the shore end of the cable, July 22 81 Interior of one of the tanks on board the Great Eastern: Cable passing out 86 Launching buoy on August 8, in lat. 51° 25´ 30´´; long. 30° 56´ (marking spot where cable had been grappled) 87 Forward deck cleared for the final attempt at grappling, August 11 92 THE ATLANTIC TELEGRAPH. I shall not detain the readers of this brief narrative with any sketch of the progress of electrical science. There are text-books, cyclopædias, and treatises full of information concerning the men who worked in early days, and recording the labours of those who still toil on, investigating the laws and developing the applications of the subtle agency which has long attracted the attention of the most acute, ingenious, and successful students of natural philosophy. For the last two centuries the greater number of those whose names are known in science have made electrical experiments a favourite pursuit, or turned to them as an agreeable recreation from severer studies. The rapidity with which electricity travels for considerable distances through insulated conductors soon suggested its use as a means of transmitting intelligence; but the high tension of the currents from friction machines, and the difficulty of insulating the conductors, were practical obstacles to the employment of the devices, some of them ingenious, recommended for that purpose from year to year. Otto Von Guericke, and his globe of sulphur; Grey, with his glass tube and silken cords; and Franklin, with his kite, were, however, the precursors of the philosophers who have done much, and whose successors may yet do much more, for the world. It is not easy to decide whether it is the man who gives a new idea to the world, or he who embodies that idea in a form and turns it into a fact, who is deserving of the credit to be assigned to any invention. A vague expression of belief that a certain end may be attained at a future period by means then unknown does not constitute a discovery, and does not entitle the person who utters it, verbally or in writing, to the honour which is due to him who indicates specifically the way of achieving the object, or who actually accomplishes it by