Mr. Gray’s system is more directly telephonic, as aiming rather at the development of sound itself than at the transmission of messages by the vibrations corresponding to sound. A series of tuning-forks are used, which are set in separate vibration by fingering the notes of a key-board. The vibrations are transmitted to a receiving instrument consisting of a series of reeds, corresponding in note to the series of transmitting forks, each reed being enclosed in a sounding-box. These boxes vary in length from two feet to six inches, and are connected by two wooden bars, one of which carries an electro-magnet, round the coils of which pass the currents from the transmitting instrument. When a tuning-fork is set in vibration by the performer at the transmitting key-board, the electro-magnet is magnetized and demagnetized synchronously with the vibrations of the fork. Not only are vibrations thus imparted to the reed of corresponding note, but these are synchronously strengthened by thuds resulting from the lengthening of the iron when magnetized. So far as its musical capabilities are concerned, Gray’s telephone can hardly be regarded as fulfilling all the hopes that have been expressed concerning telephonic music. “Dreaming enthusiasts of a prophetic turn of mind foretold,” we learn, “that a time would come when future Pattis would sing on a London stage to audiences in New York, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Shanghai, San Francisco, and Constantinople all at once.” But the account of the first concert given at a distance scarcely realizes these fond expectations. When “Home, Sweet Home,” played at Philadelphia, came floating through the air at the Steinway Hall, New York, “the sound was like that of a distant organ, rather faint, for a hard storm was in progress, and there was consequently a great leakage of the electric current, but quite clear and musical. The lower notes were the best, the higher being sometimes almost inaudible. ‘The Last Rose of Summer,’ ‘Com’ è gentil,’ and other melodies, followed, with more or less success. There was no attempt to play chords,” though three or four notes can be sounded together. It must be confessed that the rosy predictions of M. Strakosch (the _impresario_) “as to the future of this instrument seem rather exalted, and we are not likely as yet to lay on our music from a central reservoir as we lay on gas and water, though the experiment was certainly a very curious one.”