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Mr. Graliam Bell's most marvellous invention. Of the 

 nodes and ventral segments in the plate of the Telephone 

 which actually converts sound into electricity and elec- 

 tricity into sound, we can at present form no conception. 

 All that can now be said is that the most perfect speci- 

 mens of Chladni's sand figures on a vibrating plate, or of 

 Kundt's lycopodium heaps in a musical tube, or even 

 Mr. Sedley Taylor's more delicate vortices in the films of* 

 the Phoneidoscope, are rough and sketchy compared 

 with these. For notwithstanding the fact that in the 

 movements of the Telephone-plate we have actually in 

 our hand the solution of that old world problem the 

 construction of a speaking machine ; yet the characters 

 in which that solution is expressed are too small for 

 our powers of decipherment. In movements such as 

 these we seem to lose sight of the distinction, or perhaps 

 we have unconsciously passed the boundary between 

 massive and molecular motion. 



Through the Phonograph we have not only a trans- 

 formation but a permanent and tangible record of the 

 mechanism of speech. But the difierences upon which 

 articulation (apart from loudness, pitch, and quality) 

 depends, appear from the experiments of Fleeming Jenkin 

 and of others to be of microscopic size. The Microphone 

 affords another instance of the unexpected value of 

 minute variations, — in this case of electric currents ; and 

 it is remarkable that the gist of the instrument seems to 

 lie in obtaining and perfecting that which electricians 

 have hitherto most scrupulously avoided, viz., loose 

 contact. 



Once more, Mr. De La Rue has brought forward as 

 one of the results derived from his stupendous battery 

 of 10,000 cells, strong evidence for supposing that a 

 voltaic discharge, even when apparently continuous, 



