ently taken form to establish a line
between Quebec and the Hudson Bay Company's posts north of the Columbia
River. With the two extremes so near meeting, a submarine wire would
soon be laid over Behring's Straits, or crossing at a more southern
point and touching the Aleutian Islands in its passage.

Two of the chapters of this work will be recognized by readers of the
"Atlantic" as having first appeared in its pages,--a chapter upon the
Progress and Present Condition of the Electric Telegraph in the various
countries of the world, and a description of the Electrical Influence
of the Aurora Borealis upon the Working of the Telegraph. These, with
a curiously interesting chapter upon the Various Applications of the
Telegraph, and an amusing miscellaneous chapter showing that the
Telegraph has a literature of its own, complete the chief popular
elements of the volume. The remainder is devoted mainly to a technical
treatise on the proper method of constructing telegraphic lines,
perfecting insulation, etc. In an Appendix we have a more careful
consideration of Galvanism, and a more detailed examination of the
qualities and capacities of the various batteries.

As is becoming in any, and especially in an American, treatise upon this
great subject, Mr. Prescott devotes some space to a detailed account of
the labors of Professor Morse, which have led to his being regarded as
the father of our American system of telegraphing. In a chapter entitled
"Early Discoveries in Electro-Dynamics," he publishes for the first time
some interesting facts elicited during the trial, in the Supreme Court
of the United States, of the suit of the Morse patentees against the
House Company for alleged infringement of patent. In this chapter we
have a _resume_ of the evidence before the Court, and an abstract of the
decision of Judge Woodbury. This leads clearly to the conclusion, that,
although Professor Morse had no claims to any merit of actual invention,
yet he had the purely mechanical merit of having gone beyond all his
compeers in the application of discoveries and inventions already made,
and that he was the first to contrive and set in operation a thoroughly
effective instrument.

Mr. Prescott has produced a very readable and useful book. It has been
thoroughly and appropriately illustrated, and is a very elegant specimen
of the typographer's art.

_Great Expectations_. By CHARLES DICKENS. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson &
Brothers. 8vo