rise to the surface. When they wish to say something unusual, and for which they have no signal or buoy, they write the message on a board with chalk, and send it up.

There is little need for lamps in the diving-bell, for the sun shines to the bottom of the sea, and penetrates through the numerous windows in the roof of the bell. The light is of course not so bright under the water as above it; still, on a clear day, the diver can see to read or write at the lowest depths.

The bell is furnished with benches, on which the divers sit or stand until the bottom is reached. They then step off, and set to work in the narrow space in which they are confined. For the bell is the diver's prison-house, which he cannot leave while under water, although the bell itself can be moved about. This is its great disadvantage; and a remedy for it was sought by inventors. What was needed was some apparatus not too heavy to prevent the diver, after reaching the bottom of the sea, from moving about at pleasure. After many experiments the diving apparatus, or armour, was perfected.

Diving armour is generally thought to be only about forty years old; but the idea of it is much older. The two Greeks who descended in the bell in the presence of the Emperor Charles V. wore over their heads large bladders, which contained fresh air to supply them for two minutes. Dr. Halley, the inventor of the bell, used also a leather

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cap with glass eyes which covered the head and received air from the bell by means of a tube. The fault of these two plans was that in making the cap water-tight about the neck the wearer was nearly choked. This suggested the idea of clothing the whole figure in armour. In 1721 a man named John Lethbridge, with this idea in his head, made an air-tight cask with two holes for the arms and two more for the legs, and a glass loophole through which to see. When this armour was in use it looked like a common barrel with arms and legs and one eye. This was objectionable because it was too tight round the arms and legs; besides, the diver was not always sure of being able to keep his legs, and at best could only lie down on his face. Still John Lethbridge used his cask for forty years, and made a large fortune with it. In 1789 a German named Klimgart made the first armour for diving. The head-piece was of tin, the jacket of leather, and the pantaloons and boots of leather hooped with brass. There were two pipes,-one for furnishing fresh air, the other for breathing out the foul air. On the back was carried a bag which contained fresh air. The armour was so heavy that it was almost useless.

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2

good conductor, a substance through which sound, heat, etc., can be easily transmitted (passed). telegraph, an apparatus by which intelligence can be rapidly communicated between distant points. apparatus, comes from a Latin word signify. ing to prepare or make ready; and therefore by apparatus we understand a full collection or set of implements or utensils, for performing scientific experiments or operations. objec▪ tionable, open to objections or arguments against its use.

It was not until 1829 that a Frenchman, named Siebe, invented the armour now in use. It is made almost wholly of India-rubber, only the helmet being of metal and leather. The trousers, boots, and jacket are all of one piece, and the diver gets into it up to the neck from above, just as one would get into a sack. The neck-piece is arranged to draw closely about the lower part of the neck, and padded so as to keep tight without choking. In the same way India-rubber rings are placed round the wrists. There are no gloves; the touch of the fingers must often be the diver's only guide, and these cannot of course be covered. The last thing he puts on is the helmet. This covers, but does not rest on the head, being supported by the shoulders and breast. The diver adds also a dagger to his belt and an axe in his left hand on his breast is hung a heavy weight, and at his back another. When all else is ready the mouthpiece of the helmet is screwed on by one assistant, while another at the same instant begins to work the air-pump which supplies the helmet with air. The diver then descends into the water by a ladder, or, jumping overboard, sinks rapidly at first, but more slowly after a time, to the bottom of the sea.

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The diver carries down attached to his belt a

rope called the "life line," by which he is drawn up at a signal, in case of accident. His means of talking to the men above are this line and the tubes; the signals are made by pulls. The weights are required to sink and keep the diver at the bottom. On land these weights would be very heavy; in water of twenty or thirty feet, weights of eighty and one hundred pounds are not felt; nor is the weight of the armour to be noticed. The diver, thus loaded so that he can only drag himself along on land, can clamber over sunken ships or rocky reefs, jump down hatchways, and even climb masts and 1stanchions. Divers are often masons who build submarine walls, and they say that the labour of moving a large stone in the water is much less than on land. Many carry down with them for a walking-stick a heavy crowbar, which at thirty or forty feet below the surface is not heavier than a stout cane out of water.

Divers are not only masons but carpenters, and many of them make large sums by patching the hulls of steamers to save them from sinking. When the Great Eastern steamship was returning to England from her first trip to America, some years ago, she sprang a leak below the water line, and began to fill rapidly. Efforts were made to stop the flow of water, but it was not until a diver went down and patched the hull on the outside, that the leak was stopped and the vessel enabled to reach Liverpool in safety. During the Russian war the English ship-of-war Agamemnon was shot

PRAISE OF A SHEPHERD'S LIFE.

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through below the water line. The carpenter, who had formerly been a diver, at once put on his armour, and while the cannon-balls were falling about him plunged into the sea, sank to the side of the ship, stopped the holes, and saved her from sinking. Since that time the English sailors have been trained to use submarine armour.

The principal work of the diver is to recover lost treasure and lost ships. By his aid a sunken vessel can be searched from stem to stern, and everything of value stripped from it as cleanly as if it lay on the beach in the hands of the wreckers. In 1859 the Royal Charter was sunk off the English coast, and the divers set to work to strip her. One of them, roaming about in the hull of the sunken vessel, came upon a solid bar of gold worth £2,000. In 1860 the ship Malabar was sunk off the coast of Spain, and remained untouched until 1861, when a diver went down to her, and on the first trip found the entire treasure of the vessel, amounting to £280,000. From the wreck of the Lady Charlotte a diver named John Gann recovered £100,000 in gold.

stanchion, a prop or support; a small post.

PRAISE OF A SHEPHERD'S LIFE.

'METHINKS it were a happy life

To be no better than a homely 2 swain ;

To sit upon a hill, as I do now,

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To carve out 'dials quaintly, point by point,