But perhaps one of the most interesting events, to Prince Albert at least, was the laying of the first submarine telegraph cable at Portsmouth on the 13th of December, 1846. In the year 1843 telegraphic communication from the Nine Elms terminus at Portsmouth to Gosport had been established. Then the wires were continued to the Clarence Victualling Yard. The harbour, however, still intervened between the end of the wire and the Port Admiral’s house, and it was supposed to be impossible to connect the two points electrically under water. The first plan suggested was to lay the wires in metal cases, to be fixed in position by divers with diving-bells. But it was finally agreed to lay the wires in a stout cable, and this was done without the use of a return wire. The first message sent over it thus demonstrated that water would act as a ready conductor in completing the electrical circuit, and almost immediately projectors were developing a plan for laying a submarine cable to France. This and the discovery of the use of ether as an anæsthetic in surgery--the first painless operation being performed on a patient under its influence by Mr. Liston in University College Hospital--were the chief practical achievements in science during a year which closed with anxious forebodings from Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland, where the scourge of famine was again smiting the people. [Illustration: THE LAKES OF KILLARNEY. (_From a Photograph by W. Lawrence, Dublin._)] CHAPTER XVI. A DISTRESSFUL COUNTRY.