in operating during the year 5,326, being length of line sufficient to gridle more than one-fifth of the circumference of the golbe. It should be borne in mind that a large proportion of this labor has performed, as it were, in the presence of an armed foe. Sometimes the lines have been required to take their course through portions of the revolted States actually in the possession of the enemy, and upon such occasions the constructing parties have been obliged to perform their labor during the night-time only to aviod detection and capture by the enemy. It would be difficult to enumerate the hazards, vexations, and obstacles incident to the construction of military telegraph lines. The telegraph is ever at the front, occupying the post of danger and of honor. It has been frequently in advance of the army, and it cannot be denied but that the result of its enterprising hazard has often proved of much advantage to our forces. But few cases of capture of telegraphers by the enemy have occurred when these experts have voluntarily assumed advance and exposed positions while in the discharge of their duties. Follow the army where may, there also you will find the telegraph exercising its vigilance and its protection over the surrounding camps. At the foremost picket-posts, in the rifle-pits, and in the advance parallels, at any hour of the day or the night, you can listen to the mysterious yet intellectual click of the telegraph instument. Admist the strifle of battle and the whistling of buttles its swift, silent messangers pass unseen unharmed. It is through the medium of the telegraph for the daily sustenance of the armies are ordered forwared from their depositories. If an advance of the army is to be made, all definciencies to the comfort and necessities of the troops, or any lack of the material of war, can, by the assistance of the military wires, be immediately ordered and speedily procured. If a retrograde movement is contemplated, all detachments adjacent to the line of march are quickly notified by telegraph, and the whole column is in motion at once.

The public mind has but a faint conception of the magnitude of the uses of the army telegraph. Its importance and utlity in a military campaign are fully undertsood only by those who are constantly brought into contact with it as a medium for the daily transaction of their important and extensive business. As an illustration of the importance and usefulness of the military and commercial telegraph to the Government, I will refer to the fact under the fisrt cal for 300,000 volunteers, and within forty days from the time that recruiting actively commenced, 327,000 men were mustered into service 50,000 of whom were armed, equipped, and placed in the field; 150,000 were armed, eqipped, and awaiting marching orders. The orders of the honorable Secretary of War, and the detailed instructions from the various bureaus of his department pertaining to the mustering, clothing, equipping, and arming of these troops, together with the correspondence of the War Department with the various State authorities, were transmitted graph offices are kept open day and night continaully, the lines never being closed to t he transaction of business. The War Department and the General-in-Chief at Washington are in constant telegraphic communication with the commanders of the armies both East and West. Take a glance along the military railroads of the country, and in quiet company with the long contionous band of iron rail, you will observe the air lines of iron wire throught which the electrict wigned messegners of thought flash the orders of our commanders from one section of the