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The echoes of the guns which from Königgrätz and a dozen battle-fields in France had resounded round the globe, awakening the statesmen of all countries, had apparently ricochetted over the United States, as fog sound-signals are noticed to rebound overhead, unheard through long stretches of the sea-level, until they again touch the water beyond.

There are, in various parts of the world, several sound-signals made by utilizing natural orifices in cliffs through which the waves drive the air with such force and velocity as to produce the sound required. One of the most noted is that on one of the Farallon Islands, forty miles off the harbor of San Francisco, which was constructed by Gen.

Both flags and sound-signals, however, are restricted owing to the comparatively short distances over which they can be read with any degree of accuracy.

Water, and solid bodies, such as glass, or metal, or sonorous wood, convey the modulations with high velocity, and he conceived the plan of transmitting sound-signals, music, or speech to long distances by this means. He estimated that sound would travel 200 miles a second through solid rods, and proposed to telegraph from London to Edinburgh in this way.

Melbury was among the last to retain horse-bells in that neighborhood; for, living at Little Hintock, where the lanes yet remained as narrow as before the days of turnpike roads, these sound-signals were still as useful to him and his neighbors as they had ever been in former times.

Sound-signals constitute so large a factor in the safety of the navigator, that the scientists attached to the lighthouse establishments of the various countries have given much attention to their production and perfection, notably Tyndall in England and Henry in this country. The success of the United States has been such that other countries have sent commissions here to study our system.