In place of over 700 batteries with 3,500 cells of the Bichromate, Daniel and Leclanche type in use at the Bristol telegraph office for many years, a system of accumulators or storage batteries has been brought into operation. The power for charging the accumulators is generated on the spot by a Crossley's gas engine driving a dynamo. The accumulators number 250, and each has seven divisions. The hexode instrument between Bristol and London requires a voltage of 400 dry cells. There are two complete sets of accumulators, each with separate connecting wires to the instrument room. One set is in use at a time. The system of accumulators has been introduced for the purposes of economy and saving of space. It may be interesting to the uninitiated to learn that in telegraphy the earth plays the part of a return wire; thus the circuit between Bristol and Birmingham is rendered complete by earth. The wires connected with the two towns indicated are brought into the test boxes at the respective places, and there connected to a single wire at each town which finds earth by means of a zinc plate buried some twelve feet in the soil near or under the Post Office buildings. Occasionally when people have been out for a drive or a cycle ride, and their eyes have been delighted with the grand scenery to be found around Bristol, they look, as they journey homewards, to the Government poles and to the many wires therefrom suspended, and wonder which are telegraph wires, which are telephone wires, where they all lead to, and between what points messages are sent and conversations held. Such travellers returning to Bristol by way of Almondsbury would see the wires on the one side (telegraphs), which run from Bristol to Falfield, Newport, Cardiff, Swansea, Gloucester, Liverpool; London to Swansea, Newport, and Cardiff; Birmingham to Exeter; Plymouth to Liverpool; and (telephones) Bristol to Birmingham, Gloucester, Cardiff; and on the other side of the road (telephones) Horfield, Fylton, Almondsbury, Newport, Cardiff, Gloucester and Birmingham. In some instances there are two or three wires for the same place. The telegraph, and telephone wires cross and recross each other at frequent intervals along the road, and the whole sets of wires cross from side to side of the road between Fylton and Almondsbury. Alternative routes for the wires are adopted where practicable, so that in case of a break-down on one line communication may be kept up on the other.