The form which the records above suggested will ultimately assume must be a matter of conjecture. It is quite possible that the written word may in all departments of life lose some of its present vital importance. We may imagine, if we choose, that instead of creating records which can be read, we may find it advisable to create records that can be listened to: and some of the apparent inconveniences of this substitution may easily be supposed to be dispensed with. The handiness of a written memorandum is largely a matter of habit. A practised eye can "skim" a long document, and either through the use of black-type headlines, or by pure skill, alight upon exactly the passage required; and if it were necessary, in order to find a given passage, to listen to the whole document being read over by the recording phonograph, no doubt much time would be lost. We shall not be so extremely intolerant of loss of time, perhaps, in the new age, as some people imagine: but in any case, if the speed of the phonograph be imagined as adjustable, it will be perceived that we could then make it gabble parrotwise over the inessential, and let it linger with more deliberation over what we wanted to assure ourselves of. We could even "skip" useless portions--one can do this with phonographs already in use. Probably such aural records may be made capable of acceptance in courts of law, and the maxim verbum auditum manet will take the place of a well-known proverb of our day. Very likely business letters may some day take the form of conveniently-shaped tablets, made of some plastic material, and capable of being utilised by means of a talking machine.