ts brought before this Conference were Earth Currents,
Atmospheric Electricity, Accumulators or Secondary Batteries, and
Telephones. There was an extremely able paper brought forward by Mr. T.D.
Lockwood, the electrician of the American Bell Telephone Company, on
Telephones, and the disturbances that influence their working. When that
paper is published, it will well be worth your careful examination.

Papers were also read on the Transmission of Energy, and there were papers
on many other subjects.

So much for the Electrical Conference.

Now, the Americans at the present moment are suffering from a mania which
we, happily, have passed through, that is, the mania of exhibitions.

While we were at Philadelphia, there was an exceedingly interesting
exhibition held. I do not intend to say much about that exhibition, for
the simple reason that Professor G. Forbes has promised, during the
forthcoming session, to give us a paper describing what he saw there, and
his studies at Philadelphia; and I am quite sure that it will be a paper
worthy of him, and of you. But, apart from this exhibition at
Philadelphia, I could not go anywhere without finding an exhibition. There
was one at Chicago, another at St. Louis, another at Boston; everybody was
talking about one at Louisville, where I did not go; and there were rumors
of great preparations for the "largest exhibition the world has ever
seen," according to their own account, at New Orleans. However, I
satisfied myself with seeing the exhibition at Philadelphia, which
consisted strictly of American goods, and was not of the international
nature general to such exhibitions. But it was a fine exhibition, and one
that no other single nation could bring together.

_Telegraphs_.--When I spoke to you in 1878, my remarks were almost
entirely confined to telegraphs, for at that day the telephone was not, as
a practical instrument, in existence. I brought from America on that
occasion the first telephones that were brought to this country. Then the
practical application of electricity was applied to telegraphs, and so
telegraphs formed the subject of my theme. But while in 1877 I saw a great
deal to learn, and picked up a great many wrinkles, and brought back from
America a good many processes, I go back there now in 1884, seven years
afterward, and I do not find one single advance made--I comeback with
scarcely one single wrinkle; and, in fact, while we in England during
those seven