As agents are being appointed in the towns and cities in England and other countries, ladies will in future be saved the journey to London, as they will be able to attend classes in their own neighbourhood, as they do their cookery class. As an agency, the Society has found employment for numbers of women, who, as far as we are aware, are satisfied with the results. THE STENO-TELEGRAPH. A new instrument, as we announced last month, has recently been devised by Signor Michela, which, if successful, is likely to supersede altogether the present system of telegraphy. By its aid, the inventor states that it is possible to transmit from one hundred and seventy to two hundred words a minute—or about the rate at which the majority of speeches are delivered—in any language with which the operator is familiar. This is certainly a great and valuable achievement; and the instrument has this advantage over the more easily worked telephone, that it leaves a record of the message behind. The following brief description will assist the reader in comprehending the method by which the instrument is worked. It is simply a printing-machine with two rows of ten keys each—six white and four black; the keys press on twenty studs, which by means of levers are connected with twenty styles carrying the signs or characters used for printing. The printed characters represent twenty phonetic sounds, which the inventor, by combining the signs and skilfully grouping the sounds in series, claims to be sufficient to represent all the phonetic sounds in any language. The system of stenography which he employs has for three years been practically tested in the Italian Senate; and it is now for the first time employed for the electrical transmission of words. The person who transmits the message listens to the words as they drop from the lips of the speaker; he subjects them to a process of mental analysis, arranges every syllable phonetically, touches the corresponding key on his instrument, and there appears on narrow slips of paper, as if by magic, a phonetic representation of the speech to which he is listening—not only on the materials before him, but on corresponding materials at the distant station with which his instrument is connected. He keeps his slips of paper as a record; while the slips at the receiving station are handed to persons, initiated in the mysteries of this system of shorthand, for translation. Nor are its mysteries of an extraordinary character, for it is said that any intelligent person can translate this telegraphic shorthand after fifteen days. To transmit messages with facility, a study and practice of six months are necessary; and it is said that an expert hand can transmit as many as two hundred words in a minute.