The delivery of the message must be prompt, and to the right person. They are certainly bound to send it beyond their own lines, if this be obviously implied and required by the address of the message, and thus receive it. Whether they are liable for a failure of duty by lines which take the message from them, must depend, as a matter of principle, upon the question, whether these other lines are associated with theirs, in such wise as to make them to this extent copartners. Otherwise they are bound only to deliver it at a proper time and in a proper way to the succeeding line. This question always resolves itself into this: Has

(k) N. Y. & Wash. Pr. Tel. Co. v. Dryburg, 35 Perm. St. 208. The message delivered for transmission in this case was, "Send me for Wednesday evening two hand-bouquets, very handsome, one of five and one of ten dollars." The operator read the word hand as hund, and, assuming that hundred was intended, added the letters red, so that the dispatch transmitted read "two hundred bouquets." Before the mistake was discovered, the plaintiff had cut a large number of valuable flowers, which were rendered entirely valueless, and for the loss thus occasioned it was held that he might recover. The court say: "The wrong of which the plaintiff complains consists in Bending him a different message from that which they had contracted with Le Roy to send. That it was a wrong, is as certain as that it was their duty to transmit the message for which they were paid. . . . One of the plainest of their obligations is to transmit the very message prescribed. To follow copy, an imperative law of the printing office, is equally applicable to the telegraph office."

(l) Henisler v. Freedman, 2 Parsons, Sel. Cas. 274; State v. Litchfield, 10 Am. Law Reg. (n. s.) 376; In re Waddell, 8 Jur. (n. s.) 181; In re Ince, 20 Law Times (n. s.) 421.

1 Where a message received by an agent is an unintelligible jargon, and the agent wrongly interprets it, the telegraph company is not liable for the ensuing loss, though it has not delivered the exact words received from his principal. Hart v. Direct, etc. Cable Co. 86 N. Y. 633.

257 i the receiving line, by actual connection with other lines, by an appearance of connection sanctioned by the receiving line, by custom, or advertisement or otherwise, led their customer to believe or justified him in believing, that they will send the message over the whole distance as over their own lines? Receiving pay for the whole distance might be prima facie evidence of such a contract, but it would be open to explanation or rebutter. (m) Many companies now guard against this class of liabilities, by a provision printed upon the * message blank, that they will not i be responsible for errors or delay on connecting lines, and making the company which receives the message, only the agent of the sender, to send the message on other lines when necessary. (mm)

In the message blanks now commonly used, the conditions are printed upon the face of the paper in such a manner as to make them a part of the contract for transmission. (nn)1

(m) So held in De Rutte v. N. Y., Alb. & Buf. Tel. Co. 1 Daly, 547; and in Baldwin v. U. S. Tel. Co. 1 Lansing, 125; and see Thurn v. Alta Cal. Tel. Co. 15 Cal. 472. On the other hand, in Stevenson v. Montreal Tel. Co. 16 Upper Canada R. 530, it was held, by a divided court, that although the defendants advertised their line as connecting with all the principal cities and towns in Canada and the United States, and had received the charge for transmission to a point beyond their own line, this imposed on them no obligation beyond that of delivering the message safely to the connecting line, and paying for its transmission thereon, and that there was no implied contract to deliver the message safely at the termination of the connecting line. And see West. Un. Tel. Co. v. Carew, 15 Mich. 626; and Baldwin v. U. S. Tel. Co. 54 Barb. 506. And in Leonard v. N. Y.f Alb. & Buf. Tel. Co. 41 N. T. 544, it is said that "each carrier, by the receipt of the goods and the consequent promise to forward them, enters into an agreement with the owner at New York, although he does not meet him or correspond with him personally, that he will carry and deliver the goods, and is liable to the original owner in New York if he fails in his undertaking. The rule and the reason for it are the same in regard to the transmission of telegraphic messages." The principles on which this question depends appear to be precisely the same as those governing the liability of connecting lines of railroad and other carriers. We have seen already that the decisions in this latter class of cases are exceedingly conflicting, and it is to be expected that there will be the same diversity upon this point See ante, p. et seq.

(mm) In an action against a connecting line for negligence in transmitting a message sent under the above conditions, it was held that the terms and conditions applied only to the company to which the message was first given, and that there was no special contract between the sender and the line which subsequently completed the transmission. Squire v. West. Un. Tel. Co. 08 Mass. 232.

(nn) In Breese v. U. S. Tel. Co. 45 Barb. 274; 48 N. Y. 132, where the message was written upon such a blank, the court say: "Before the message was written under the printed heading, and signed and delivered to the defendant, it was a general proposition to all persons desiring to send messages by the defendant's peculiar means of transmission or conveyance, of the terms and conditions upon which such messages would be sent,

1 A delivery to a telegraph company of a message on a blank containing the terms of transmission is an acceptance of the terms, and forms a contract between the parties. Young v. West. Un. Tel. Co. 65 N. Y. 168. A condition in a night message to be sent at half the usual rates, "it is agreed between the senders of the following message and this company that the company shall not be liable for mistakes or delays in the transmission or delivery, or for non-delivery of any message, beyond the amount received