when their object is to produce a novel species, or a new and great
invention like the telegraph. It is then a question of raising, not one
seedling, but many, and modifying these in the lapse of time.

Similarly the telegraph is not to be regarded as the work of any one
mind, but of many, and during a long course of years. Because at length
the final seedling is obtained, are we to overlook the antecedent
varieties from which it was produced, and without which it could not
have existed? Because one inventor at last succeeds in putting the
telegraph in operation, are we to neglect his predecessors, whose
attempts and failures were the steps by which he mounted to success?
All who have extended our knowledge of electricity, or devised a
telegraph, and familiarised the public mind with the advantages of it,
are deserving of our praise and gratitude, as well as he who has entered
into their labours, and by genius and perseverance won the honours of
being the first to introduce it.

Let us, therefore, trace in a rapid manner the history of the electric
telegraph from the earliest times.

The sources of a river are lost in the clouds of the mountain, but it is
usual to derive its waters from the lakes or springs which are its
fountain-head. In the same way the origins of our knowledge of
electricity and magnetism are lost in the mists of antiquity, but there
are two facts which have come to be regarded as the starting-points of
the science. It was known to the ancients at least 600 years before
Christ, that a piece of amber when excited by rubbing would attract
straws, and that a lump of lodestone had the property of drawing iron.
Both facts were probably ascertained by chance. Humboldt informs us
that he saw an Indian child of the Orinoco rubbing the seed of a