194 Literary and Philosophical Society. 



teaching the dumb to speak, an art begun in the seven- 

 teenth century, we believe, by Dr. Willis, one of those 

 having an unknown future. This art was probably put on 

 a firm basis for the first time in * Visible Speech and the 

 Science of Universal Alphabets, or Self-interpreting Phy- 

 siological Letters for the Writing of all Languages in one 

 Alphabet,' by Alex. Melville Bell, 1867. With these early 

 teachings of his father, before leaving Edinburgh, Graham 

 Bell's mind was sent from youth towards the goal sought 

 the production of speech by artificial apparatus. It 

 would have been interesting if he had found the phono- 

 graph, as some such thing was evidently in the father's eye 

 on his early inquiries ; but one seeks and another finds. 



The writer believes that societies for correcting spelling 

 are beginning at the wrong end. Their methods will in- 

 evitably produce diversity and confusion, because they use 

 letters to express the normal sounds to be advocated, 

 whereas these letters will be interpreted in various ways. 

 We must first have sounds that can be reproduced at will, 

 and this can only be had from mechanism so constructed 

 as to be readily repeated, and so described that persons at 

 a distance may make and produce the same sounds. 

 On this subject it will be interesting to read ' On the Pneu- 

 matic Action which accompanies the Articulation of Sounds 

 by the Human Voice, as Exhibited by a Recording Instru- 

 ment,' by W. H. Barlow, F.R.S. Proceed. Royal Soc., 1874. 

 It was called also a Logograph. 



Whilst speaking of the observation of the deaf, and 

 the mode of instruction, it is interesting to think of an 

 advance still greater, and indicating a mode by which not 

 only the deaf but the blind may understand spoken lan- 

 guage. The discovery has been quite forgotten so far as 



