At the present time telegrams are delivered free within three miles of the office nearest the address, which is called the Terminal Office, and when that office is a Head Post Office, no charge is made for delivery within the town postal area, even if that extends for more than three miles. No charge is therefore made for delivery within the whole of the London postal area, which extends as far as Southgate, Woodford, Lee, South Norwood, Wimbledon, Hanwell, and Wheatstone. Before the transfer, important towns such as Bournemouth, Dundee, Exeter, Inverness, Limerick, Scarborough, or Wolverhampton did not work directly to London, and as a consequence communication had to be gained by a number of re-transmissions and transferences over the various companies' lines. Serious delay often ensued. Now, however, the Central Telegraph Office in London, which is more particularly a transmitting centre, has direct communication with every town of importance in the United Kingdom, and with every telegraph office in the metropolis. The direct communication between provincial towns has also greatly increased. Even now, when there are breakdowns, the transmitting of messages sometimes exhibits curious results in re-transmission. Mr. Baines remembers messages being sent during a breakdown from London to Carlisle through Sligo thus: London to Dublin _via_ Haverfordwest and Waterford, Dublin to Sligo, Sligo to Belfast, Belfast to Glasgow, and Glasgow to Carlisle. There is also a legend in the Central Telegraph Office that the wires to the North being stopped on one occasion, an urgent message from London to Newcastle was forwarded by way of Hamburg. Another story is of a special correspondent who, being unable to gain admittance into a newspaper office in Fleet Street, went to the Central Telegraph Office, and telegraphed to the Irish end of the special telegraph wire worked from the newspaper office to Ireland, requesting the Irish clerk to tell the Fleet Street clerk to come down and open the door. Direct communication has also been considerably extended to continental towns. In 1889 the Post Office took over the working of the Submarine Company's cables, and direct communication is now established with a large number of foreign towns. At the present time there are some sixty wires with an aggregate of ninety-five available channels to the Continent. Five additional wires (six channels) are worked from Liverpool to towns in Belgium, France, and Germany, two wires are leased to the Anglo-American Telegraph Company for working to Belgium and Holland, and two to the Indo-European Telegraph Company for transmission of their traffic to South Russia, India, and countries beyond, _via_ Germany. The remainder are worked from the cable room of the Central Telegraph Office in London to Austria, Hungary, Belgium, France, Germany, Holland, Italy and Switzerland.