ting engineer to the General Post Office in England--
researches conducted with much method and based on precise theoretical
considerations. He thus succeeded in establishing very easy, clear,
and regular communications between various places; for example, across
the Bristol Channel. The long series of operations accomplished by so
many seekers, with the object of substituting a material and natural
medium for the artificial lines of metal, thus met with an undoubted
success which was soon to be eclipsed by the widely-known experiments
directed into a different line by Marconi.

It is right to add that Sir William Preece had himself utilised
induction phenomena in his experiments, and had begun researches with
the aid of electric waves. Much is due to him for the welcome he gave
to Marconi; it is certainly thanks to the advice and the material
support he found in Sir William that the young scholar succeeded in
effecting his sensational experiments.

Sec. 4

The starting-point of the experiments based on the properties of the
luminous ether, and having for their object the transmission of
signals, is very remote; and it would be a very laborious task to hunt
up all the work accomplished in that direction, even if we were to
confine ourselves to those in which electrical reactions play a part.
An electric reaction, an electrostatic influence, or an
electromagnetic phenomenon, is transmitted at a distance through the
air by the intermediary of the luminous ether. But electric influence
can hardly be used, as the distances it would allow us to traverse
would be much too restricted, and electrostatic actions are often very
erratic. The phenomena of induction, which are very regular and
insensible to the variations of the atmosphere, have, on the other
hand, for a long time appeared serviceable for telegraphic purposes.

We might find, in a certain number of the attempts just mentioned, a
partial employment of these phenomena. Lindsay, for instance, in his
project of communication across the sea, attributed to them a
considerable role. These phenomena even permitted a true telegraphy
without intermediary wire between the transmitter and the receiver, at
very restricted distances, it is true, but in peculiarly interesting
conditions. It is, in fact, owing to them that C. Brown, and later
Edison and Gilliland, succeeded in establishing communications with
trains in motion.

Mr Willoughby S. Smith and Mr Charles A. Steve