The Seine is the school where the lessons are given, and the police
takes care that the pupils infringe not the laws of decency.
* * * * *
It is certain that, as far back as the year 1684, means were proposed
in London to transmit signs to a great distance in a very short space
of time, and that, towards the close of the seventeenth century, a
member of the Academy of Sciences made, near Paris, several minute
experiments on the same subject. The paper read at the Royal Society
of London, and the detail of the experiments made in France, seem to
suggest nearly the same means as those now put in practice, by the
two nations, with respect to