sion telephone," acts by means of "pulses," which are set up in 

 the transmitting wire by an intensely sympathetic vibratory 

 arrangement at the mouthpiece. The disc, or diaphragm, is of 

 metal, and is connected with a series of small metallic springs 

 placed in a case behind the disc. This arrangement is found to 

 be most effective in producing harmonised vibrations, and it is 

 this vibrating battery (so to speak) of spiral springs whicb gathers 

 up, intensifies, and transmits the sound to the telephonic wire. 

 This pulsion telephone was tested some months ago on the Mid- 

 land Eailway, for a distance of three miles, first with a taut and 

 then with a slack wire, and in both cases with marked success, 

 conversation, singing, and playing at the one end being perfectly 

 audible at the other. This telephone, which has now been in 

 use for some months in America, is highly thought of by several 

 of our railway companies and by the Post Office, and a company 

 is being formed to establish its working on this side of the 

 Atlantic. It has one great recommendation, that it is a cheap m- 

 strument, and the wires can be laid at the small cost of from 

 thirty to forty shillings per mile. 



A still more marvellous instrument than the telephone, or even 

 the phonograph, was exhibited last summer at the Post Office 

 Jubilee celebration. I allude to the electrophoscope, by which you 

 not only hear the voice, but see the face of the person addressing 

 you. The effect was thus described by an eye-witness: "On 

 entering a little cabinet you see before you on the wall a funnel- 

 shaped disc, brightly illuminated by four electric incandescent 

 lamps ; you put the telephone to your ear, and ring your corres- 

 pondent up. His face is seen immediately in the centre of the 

 disc. You speak and he replies. His countenance changes its 

 expression, he laughs, looks solemn, grave, or gay by turn. The 

 features of the pei son at the other end could not have been more 

 distinct had they been looked at from a short distance, through the 

 object lens of a spy glass." From this account the new invention 

 seems likely to not only annihilate time, as in the case of the 

 electric telegraph, but also space, if it can call up over any 

 intervening distance the face of the listener or speaker. But 

 whether this fanciful apparatus will ever be turned to any practical 

 use is, I imagnie, somewhat doubtful, especially as the inventors 

 carefully withhold any account of the mechanism of the contrivance. 

 It sounds, indeed, not unlike the description of the developments of 

 science in the year 2,000, as told in the amusing pages of Mr. 

 Bellamy's " Looking Backward." 



Another recent invention of the practical utility of which I am 

 somewhat sceptical, is the so-called " galvanic chair," which, we 

 are told, will be largely used for dental and surgical operations. 



