to express words, while, before, they could only make inarticulate sounds.” We have a variation of this instrument which has been introduced employing a diaphragm held in a telephone mouthpiece, and free to vibrate under the influence of sounds. This is connected by a string to a bit of wood that may be held in the teeth. In use the hearer places the wood between his teeth, the string is drawn tight, and the speaker speaks through the telephone mouthpiece, the vibrations of the diaphragm being then conveyed to the teeth through the stretched string. This apparatus works very successfully, and ladies use it, but it is not so convenient for general use as the Audiphone. [Illustration: Fig. 188.—The Telephone.] The Telephone is now in daily use in London, and is by no means strange to the majority of our countrymen, still some description of it will probably be acceptable, and a glance at its history may prove interesting. [Illustration: Fig. 189.—The “receiving” apparatus.] In speaking of the Telephone, we must not lose sight of the facts before mentioned, as regards our sense of hearing, and the manner in which the ear acts by the series of bones termed the hammer, the anvil, and stirrup. In the process of reproduction of tone in the magnetic instruments, the mechanism of the human ear was, to a certain extent, imitated, and a diaphragm, by vibrations, generates and controls an electric current. Professor Wheatstone was the first person to employ the electric wire for the transmission of sounds, but Professor Philip Reiss, of Friedrichsdorf, was the first to make the experiment of producing musical sounds at a distance. His first instrument was of a most primitive nature; subsequently he produced an instrument of which fig. 188 is the Telephone, fig. 189 the “receiver.” In fig. 188, it will be seen that there is an aperture on the top and one at the side; the latter is the mouthpiece. The top aperture is covered with a membrane which is stretched very tightly. When a person speaks or sings into the mouthpiece his voice is at once concentrated upon the tight membrane, which it causes to vibrate in a manner corresponding with the vibrations of the voice. There are two binding screws, one at each side. To the centre of the tight membrane a piece of platinum is fixed, and this is connected with the binding screw on one side, in which a wire from the battery is fixed. On the membrane is a tripod, the feet of which (two) rest in metal cups, one of them being in a mercury cup connected with the binding screw at the opposite side to that already mentioned. The third “foot”—a platinum point—is on the platinum in the centre of the membrane or top, and moves with it. Every time the membrane is stretched by a vibration the platinum point is touched, and the closed circuit is broken by the return of each vibration. [Illustration: Fig. 190.—Bell’s first Telephone (Transmitter).