two or more lines run together for any considerable distance, as in practice they often must, owing to an electrical phenomenon known as induction, a conversation taking place along one line is audible in the receivers attached to the remainder. Further, it frequently happens that owing to a shell burst or to carelessness on the part of some line layer, a pole or other support to which a large number of lines are fixed is brought down, and in its fall all the lines are broken. It may often be very difficult to discover, amongst all the ends, which belongs to which, and an inexperienced man, actuated by a sincere and laudable desire to put matters right, is very apt to connect them up by the light of nature. The consequent confusion that arises must provoke to demoniac laughter the denizens of hell. One observation officer finds himself in direct and clear communication with the officer in charge of supplies and transport, another with an advanced dressing station. Infantry headquarters hold long and heated converse with the wagon line of a field battery, the G.$1.$2. Divisional Artillery threatens to place the quartermaster of a territorial battalion under arrest because he steadfastly refuses to open fire immediately on target Z. And a considerable time elapses before all these various people are again connected to the proper quarter. The very form of the telephonic message lends itself to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. There is a story of an officer named Close, who as forward observation officer for his battery laid out a line to an observation post of his own choosing, and whose linesmen by some accident contrived to get their wire touching one belonging to a different system. His major, wishing to speak to him, called him up, and hearing a "Hullo!" in reply, began "Are you Close?" To his astonishment and delight a strange voice replied, "No, you dam! fool, I'm five thousand yards away!" This same crossing of wires is another common cause of mixed conversations, they chafe one another until the insulation is worn away and a good connection established, when the two sets of instruments respond to one another's calls. This very trouble was the cause of my once being awakened from sleep by the urgent summons of the buzzer. I jumped for the instrument--"Yes, hullo?" And then distinctly came the amazing query "Are you St. Paul?" I think the terms of my reply, in which I convinced my unknown questioner of my utter inability to follow that gentleman's advice about suffering fools gladly, satisfied him that I was not. I found out afterwards that a neighbouring battery had two observing stations, which they had christened Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's respectively. An error in transcription, whereby the singular became substituted for the plural, was probably the cause of my receiving a written message, warning me that certain experiments were to be tried that evening, and beginning in the emphatic terms, "At 6 p.m. some