_La Nature_, Paris, May 6, 1905, pp. 353–354, illustrates the _speaking head_ of l’Abbé Mical presented by him to the French Academy of Sciences July 2, 1783, and alludes to those of Albertus Magnus, Wolfgang von Kempelen, C. G. Kratzenstein, etc. Two more curious productions, in pretty much the same line as Bergerac’s, can, with equal propriety, be inserted here. The first is taken from the April number, 1632, of the _Courier Véritable_, a little monthly publication in which novel fancies were frequently aired: “Captain Vosterloch has returned from his voyage to the southern lands, which he started on two years and a half ago, by order of the States-General. He tells us, among other things, that in passing through a strait below Magellan’s, he landed in a country where Nature has furnished men with a kind of sponge which holds sounds and articulations as our sponges hold liquids. So, when they wish to dispatch a message to a distance, they speak to one of the sponges, and then send it to their friends. They, receiving the sponges, take them up gently and press out the words that have been spoken into them, and learn by this admirable means all that their correspondents desire them to know.” The second is the production of one Thomas Ward, theological poet, who was born in 1640 and died in 1704. In the second canto of one of his poems occur these words: “As Walchius could words imprison In hollow canes so they, by reason, Judgment and great dexterity, Can bottle words as well as he; And can from place to place convey them, Till, when they please, the _reed_ shall say them; Will suddenly the same discharge, And hail-shot syllables at large Will fly intelligibly out Into the ears of all about: So that the _auditors_ may gain Their meaning from the breach of cane.” REFERENCES.--Priestley, “History,” etc., 1775, p. 374, and _Dantzig Memoirs_, Vol. I. p. 294. =A.D. 1745.=--Grummert (Gottfried Heinrich), of Biala, Poland, first observes the return of the electric light _in vacuo_. In order to ascertain whether an exhausted tube would give light when it was electrified, as well as when it was excited, he presented one eight inches long and a third of an inch wide, to the electrified conductor, and was surprised to find the light dart very vividly along the entire length of the tube. He likewise observed that some time after the tube had been presented to the conductor, and exposed to nothing but the air, it gave light again without being brought to an electrified body (see _Dantzig Memoirs_, Vol. I. p. 417).