strew the ground with the carcases of the feathered trespassers by dozens. The white ant nibbled galleries in the posts, and the porcupine and bandicoot burrowed under them.'
The tremendous electrical disturbances caused by storms in India, seemed for a time to render success impossible. 'I was driven,' writes Sir William O'Shaughnessy, 'step by step to discard every screw, and lever, and pivot, and foot of wire, and frame-work and dial, without which it was practicable to work. I successively tried and dismissed the English vertical astatic needle-telegraph, the American dotter, and several contrivances of my own invention. Every thunderstorm put the astatic needles hors de combat.' He then goes on to state how he at length triumphed over these difficulties. The Indian storms and sky-artillery were at length brought under control. In one terrific North-wester of the equinox, he says, 'a flash of lightning struck the line, traversed the instrument, made its wires red-hot, and melted their ends into beads. In less than two minutes, Charles Todd, the signaller on duty, had placed another coil in gear, and reported by telegraph to Calcutta (150 miles off) what had taken place in his office.'
These heroic labours of Lord Dalhousie's self-trained electricians were destined to have marvellous results. The railway and the telegraph were worth thousands of men to us in the Mutiny of
