of the reed passes close to, but does not touch the other pole of the magnet.” Gray further says that the reed is made with parallel sides and tuned by cutting it away at one point, as this mode prevents false nodal vibrations from occurring. Selective receivers for multiple telegraphy were also invented by Graham Bell. The form shown in Fig. 46 _I_ is transcribed from Fig. 15 of Bell’s Specification to his British Patent, No. 4765, of the year 1876 (dated 9th December), which the inventor thus describes: “It is preferable to employ for this purpose an electro-magnet _E_, Fig. 15, having a coil upon only one of its legs. A steel spring armature _A_ is firmly clamped by one extremity to the uncovered leg _h_ of the magnet, and its free end is allowed to project above the pole of the covered leg.” In fact the arrangement was almost identical with, but not quite as good mechanically as that patented seven months previously by Gray. The inventor further said that a number of these instruments might be placed on one circuit, and that if one of them were set in vibration, only those would respond which were in unison with its note; and further that “the duration of the sound may be used to indicate the dot or dash of the Morse alphabet, and thus a telegraphic despatch may be indicated by alternately interrupting and renewing the sound.” Anything more totally different from Reis’s telephone than these selective harmonic telegraphs with their tuned tongues can hardly be imagined. Reis was not aiming at selective harmonic telegraphy; he wanted his one instrument to transmit every sound that a human ear could hear. He did not dream of using a tuned bar or reed; his typical structure was the tympanum of the ear. In fact, as we have seen above, the tuned reed or tongue was introduced into telegraphy for the purpose of transmitting single selected notes to the exclusion of all others. Strange though it may seem, a tongue receiver like those of Graham Bell and of Gray just described can be used for receiving speech! It is true, as Gray remarks, that a thick bar of steel, cut away as described, is best adapted for its own tone only. But Bell’s thin steel tongue, though it has its own fundamental note (and so has every tympanum, for that matter) when left free to vibrate in its own time, will reproduce _any_ other note or sound that may be _forced_ upon it by the varying attraction of the electro-magnet. There is, indeed, the whole difference between “free” and “forced” vibrations. One of the strangest delusions that has somehow grown up in recent telephonic discussions is the almost incredible proposition that a tongue cannot talk because it is a tongue. It would be equally veracious to affirm that an ear (_i.e._ a tympanum) cannot hear because it is an ear.