Recent Inventio?is. — Residents in Hobart are already familiar 

 with one of the most surprising of recent discoveries — I mean 

 the j^ower of conveying the sounds and tones of the human 

 voice to great distances by means of the telephone — through 

 its daily employment for many months past in communication 

 between the city and signal station at Mount Nelson, a 

 distar^ce of six or seven miles. It is, perhaps, not so generally 

 known that conversation has been held, although with diffi- 

 culty, between Hobart and Low Heads, at the mouth of the 

 Tamar, a distance of 160 miles. The facility with which we 

 accept these discoveries, and almost cease to wonder at them, 

 is itself not the least remarkable feature of our times. We are 

 losing a sense of the limits of possibility in nature, and are 

 as ready to believe the most incredible things, if they wear 

 the garb of science, as our ancestors were in their simple and 

 child-like ignorance. A very few years probably will elapse 

 before telegraph poles will form a necessary accompaniment 

 of every road, and civilised men will communicate verbally at 

 a distance as habitually as we now do face to face. Involving, 

 in fact, as the instruments in use here do, the application of 

 the microphone, we have two philosophical instruments of 

 great complexity, and full of instruction, at our command : a 

 mind that can clearly follow and fully comprehend the 

 j^rinciples of their construction, the functions of their several 

 currents, has learned much of physics, and of physics in a 

 direction of ever widening application. It is to be regretted 

 that we have no physical lectures ; and here, I think, the 

 State might step in, not by the endowment of any chair, but 

 by the provision of such honorariums to be placed at the dis- 

 posal of this Society as would induce competent persons to 

 give them the intellectual pleasure, and the distinction attend- 

 ing them being a large part of the reward. The time and 

 trouble involved, and usually the expenses of preparing dia- 

 grams, illustrations, models, and apparatus, quite preclude 

 most persons, not being professors or j)rofessed lecturers, 

 from imparting their knowledge in this way. I can scarcely 

 pass this subject without alluding to two applications of the 

 fertile discovery of Professor G-raham Bell, which must have 

 quickened in many minds an intense desire to witness them — 

 1 mean that beautiful but costly toy, the phonograph, which 

 I have heard reproduce an Italian song, on turning a handle, 

 in the exact tones of the singer ; and, more recent still, the 

 discovery by which light itself is made instrumental to the 

 transmission or reproduction of sound — the photophone. 

 This instrument, as you are aware, dej^endsupon the peculiar 

 property of selenium, which is not a conductor of electricity 

 in general, to become an imperfect one when fused and cooled 

 slowly. Another property is required, which it also has been 



