method of transferring the vaccine lymph from arm to arm, or from the vaccine point to the arm, differs as widely as the ideas of men can differ who have to act without any previous knowledge on a given subject. Some merely scratch the skin; others make a deep puncture; in some cases only two incisions are made, but the perfect vaccinator will always make three incisions on each arm. In many cases through ignorance the lymph is taken from the arm when it is over-ripe, and the consequence is not only a source of failure in its power of protection, but a fear that it may cause many of those unsightly eruptions which are known to follow the act of vaccination from impure lymph.

We have said enough, and more than enough, to show that in the present state of the law we can never be certain either that the population is well vaccinated, or that the lower stratum of it is vaccinated at all. When an epidemic arises, people rush to the vaccination stations to protect their little ones against the arrows of pestilence which they see flying around them and striking here and there to the death; but the epidemic passes, and their fears with it-a new crop of unvaccinated children springs up, and a new epidemic, to be repeated every four or five years, sweeps off these neglected children, and spreads terror and contagion among adults.

The Government have yet to realize the fact that we must create a standing army of well-trained medical men, well officered, and ready to meet this enemy day by day, and beat him in detail, and not to allow him

to overwhelm us by sudden onslaughts. To give this protective force due efficacy, it should have a medical organization, and not be frittered away among poorlaw boards, vaccine boards, or the many conflicting authorities which now create such friction, and make the working of the Vaccination Act a perfect nullity. We have an Officer of Health; why should not the working of the machinery of vaccination be entrusted wholly to him? And if, having given him the proper instruments and subordinates for the due carrying out of Jenner's discovery, he fails (which he would scarcely do), we should dismiss him, and appoint another, as our Yankee friends are now doing with those commanders-in-chief who have failed against the public enemy in the field.

TOWN TELEGRAPHS.

WHILST this metropolis and all other parts of the civilized world have long been put in speedy connection by means of the Electric Telegraph, the three millions of people living within the Post-Office radius have, until very lately, been denied the use of this necessary of life. This fact is the more strange inasmuch as the dealings of the great public are much more with their immediate neighbours than with those who live at a distance. Yet while any one could be put in instant communication with the mountaineers of Switzerland or the Tyrol, he had not the means of talking across the town with his own wife or servants at Hampstead. Like some pious missionaries, in looking too much abroad we had overlooked the needs of home. However, the pedestrian who makes his way along the streets, on looking up, discovers that the town is being gradually wired in overhead like the cage of the polar bear at the Zoological Gardens, must have discovered that this omission is in rapid progress of being corrected. In fact, telegraphic companies are running a race to take possession of the air over our heads, which almost equals the speed with which

the engineers are burrowing underground with their rails. Look where we will aloft, we cannot avoid seeing either thick cables suspended by gossamer threads, or parallel lines of wire in immense numbers sweeping from post to post, fixed on the house-tops and suspended over long distances. Two companies at present contest the aërial right of way, the District Telegraph Company and the Universal Private Telegraph Company. The wires of the former may be known by their being hung in parallel rows like those we see running beside the railway lines, and the latter by the thick cable slung from the two wires above.

As the public have the more direct dealings with the former company, we may first describe its method of action and organization. Originally the wires of this company, insulated by gutta-percha, ran underground in pipes sunken beneath the pavement, but the difficulty of preventing injury from the damp has induced the engineer to adopt in most recent lines the overhead system; consequently not more than one-third of the wires are now subterranean, whilst two-thirds are hung aloft, and simply galvanized to prevent oxidation. Within a radius of two miles of Charing Cross, the crossing and recrossing of these wires overhead is incessant, and the public are never distant more than five minutes from any office for the reception of messages. As the area becomes more extended these stations are more scattered; but along all the great lines of road telegraphic stations are sure to be found within a mile of each other. At the present moment there are upwards of eighty

stations in the metropolis and its environs belonging to this Company, all of which are in direct communication with the head office in Cannon Street; indeed, all the lines must, by present arrangements, speak through this centre, just as all nervous impressions must be conveyed through the brain. This is by no means a necessity of the system, but only a condition of progressive development, which will be altered as the public call for more accommodation,—and they are doing so every day. Before long, district centres for collecting and re-distributing messages will be adopted, as they have been by the Post-Office authorities. Meanwhile, the delay caused by the circuitous routes taken by the wires is not very great. We wish particularly to call attention to the question of time in the forwarding of messages by this Company, as many persons are under the impression that a commissionnaire can do his "spiriting" quicker in consequence of the delays in transmitting a message and its porterage. We may say that in no case, except by culpable neglect, should a telegraphic message take more than half an hour in reaching its ultimate telegraphic destination, a delay sometimes unavoidable, in consequence of the wires being already engaged; but all delays consequent upon the little boy who generally acts as Mercury being out or engaged when the message arrives at the suburban or other stations, are inexcusable, as by a rule of the company the officekeeper, who is generally either a proprietor of a district post-office or a small tradesman, is empowered, after ten minutes' delay, to call in an extra messenger, of which