ceptions, where there is great
competition. Having received the foregoing statement from a most
competent authority, its accuracy may be confidently relied upon.

In conclusion, I would observe that the competition which is gradually
growing up in this country must eventually compel a reduction of the
present charges; but even before that desirable opposition arrives, the
companies would, in my humble opinion, exercise a wise and profitable
discretion by modifying their present system of charges. Originally the
addresses of both parties were included in the number of words allowed;
that absurdity is now given up, but one scarcely less ridiculous still
remains--viz., twenty words being the shortest message upon which their
charges are based. A merchant in New York can send a message to New
Orleans, a distance of 2000 miles, and transact important business in
ten words--say "Buy me a thousand bales of cotton--ship to Liverpool;"
but if I want to telegraph from Windsor to London a distance of twenty
miles, "Send me my portmanteau," I must pay for twenty words. Surely
telegraph companies would show a sound discretion by lowering the scale
to ten words, and charging two-thirds of the present price for twenty.
Opposition would soon compel such a manifestly useful change; but,
independent of all coercion, I believe those companies that strive the
most to meet the reasonable demands of the public will always show the
best balance-sheet at the end of the year.--Thirteenpence is more than
one shilling.

NOTE II.

_A short Sketch of the Progress of Fire-arms._

The first clear notice which we have of rifles is in the year 1498,
nearly 120 years after the invention of gunpowder was known to Europe.
The Chinese, I believe, claim the invention 3000 years before the
Creation. The first rifle-maker was one Zugler, in Germany, and his
original object appears to have been merely to make the balls more
ragged, so as to inflict more serious wounds; a result produced before
that time by biting and hacking the balls. This appears clearly to have
been the intention, inasmuch as the cuts were made perfectly straight in
the first instance. The accurate dates of the introduction of the
various twists I have not been able to ascertain.

I can find no mention of breech-loading arms before the reign of Henry
VIII., since which time they have been constantly used in China and
other parts of the East. In 1839, they were, I understand, extensiv