Such was the foreshadowing of the great calamity that was so soon to follow. Public excitement became intense. The market value of the Atlantic Telegraph Stock assumed a downward tendency, and fell rapidly. But the projectors had not been idle. A rigid inquiry had been immediately instituted by Professor Thomson, Mr. Varley, and Sir Charles Bright, which enabled them to arrive at a conclusion that the fault must lie on the Irish coast. Consequently the Cable was underrun for three miles, cut and tested; but no defect being found, it was again spliced. During all this period its electrical condition had become so much deteriorated that such messages as passed required to be constantly repeated. So matters went, hope and fear alternating, until the insulation of the wire became suddenly worse, and at last the signals ceased to be intelligible at Newfoundland altogether. Scientific inquiry tended to show that the fault lay about 270 miles from Valentia, at the mountain range which divides the depths of the Atlantic from the shallow water on the Irish shore. This steep range, or sloping bank, which, on being sounded, showed a difference of 7,200 feet in elevation in a distance of eight miles, had been crossed by the Agamemnon an hour before the expected time, and it was said a sufficient quantity of slack had not been thrown out, so that the Cable was suffered to hang suspended in the water. But this was of course mere conjecture, and the failure most probably was precipitated by injudicious attempts to overcome defective insulation by increased battery power. The conclusions finally arrived at by the Scientific Committee appointed to report as to the causes of the failure of the Cable were, first, that it had been manufactured too hastily; secondly, that a great and unequal strain was brought on it by the machinery; and thirdly, that the repeated coilings and uncoilings it underwent served to injure it. To such causes was the failure to be attributed, not to any original defect in the gutta percha. Mr. Varley stated his opinion that there must have been a fault in the Cable while on board the Agamemnon, and before it was submerged; but none of the theories accounted for the destruction of a Cable on which half a million of money had been expended, and which (if successful) two governments had contracted to subsidise to the gross amount of 28,000_l_. yearly. Thus were annihilated, silently and mysteriously, all those hopes which had survived so many disappointments, and which for a moment had been so abundantly realised. But in England, as no ebullitions of joy had been indulged in when success seemed certain, neither was there now any yielding to despair.