182 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



instruments drew a considerable audience to this theatre last night. 

 Many, doubtless, went incredulous as to the possibility of so instruct- 

 ing the human voice flexible as it is as to imitate, with proximate 

 fidelity, a variety of wind and stringed instruments in harmonious con- 

 cert ; and such persons were not disappointed. It seems that nature 

 will only submit to a certain amount of torture, beyond which she 

 vindicates her rights. This was very much the case last night with 

 the ' Organophonic Band ' a company of twelve German perform- 

 ers, who, without any mechanical aid, executed, by voice, several 

 pieces of music, some of them of no small difficulty. A person, who 

 only heard and did not see what was going on, would certainly say that 

 he listened to music, and to the music of well known instruments, but 

 of such tender stop and weak volume, that he would remark that they 

 were instruments that had lost their wind in fact, instruments in the 

 last stage of consumption. That these new visitants are ingenious and 

 surprising, that they must have undergone considerable and laborious 

 training, in order to give such wonderful intonation and modulation 

 to the human organ, is an acknowledgement to which they are justly 

 entitled ; but as is the case with almost all exhibitions of this kind, 

 from which action and variety are absent, they are not calculated to 

 afford an evening of sustained and continuous amusement. 



" The ' Huntsman's Chorus,' from ' Der Freischutz,' with an echo, 

 in imitation of the musical box, was, perhaps, the best executed piece 

 in the entire programme, the echo being wonderfully true. A solo 

 imitative of the piccoli, was likewise admirably done, full of energy 

 and action but necessarily deficient in the sharp piercing tones of that 

 instrument. Both of these performances were encored, though there 

 was a very just and considerate feeling against repetitions from the 

 evident effort and strain which these displays occasioned to the per- 

 formers. Polkas, marches, waltzes, fantasias were all executed with 

 equal facility, and there seems scarcely an instrument, from the cym- 

 bal and drum to the Scotch bagpipes, which they are not capable of 

 imitating with more are less fidelity and exactness. Some of them can 

 imitate three or four instruments almost without a pause." 



NEW WIND GUAGE. 



MR. W. C. BUCHANAN, C. E., of Glasgow, has designed an improved 

 anemometer, or wind guage, the object of which is to remove as far 

 as possible friction from the working parts, by the weight of the vane and 

 tube to which it is attached being removed from the axis on which they 

 turn by means of a float which bears up that weight, and that the axis 

 be reduced to about one-quarter inch in thickness, the under one work- 

 ing at the foot of the apparatus, and the upper one in a hole in the centre 

 of strong iron supports, crossing each other at right angles, and allow- 

 ing room for the vane to traverse without touching them, the axis to 

 work loosely both above and below. The vessel containing the float 

 to be placed betwixt the vane and the index apparatus, and filled with 

 water or oil. The wind passing down the tube acts upon an inverted 



