We shall make a like reserve with regard to certain apparatus that have really existed, but that have been wrongly viewed as electric telegraphs. Such are those of Comus and of Alexandre. The first of these is indicated in a letter from Diderot to Mlle. Voland, dated July 12, 1762. It consisted of two dials whose hands followed each other at a distance, without the apparent aid of any external agent. The fact that Comus published some interesting researches on electricity in the _Journal de Physique_ has been taken as a basis for the assertion that his apparatus was a sort of electrical discharge telegraph in which the communication between the two dials was made by insulated wires hidden in the walls. But, if it be reflected how difficult it would have been at that epoch to realize an apparatus of this kind, if it be remembered that Comus, despite his researches on electricity, was in reality only a professor of physics to amuse, and if the fact be recalled that cabinets of physics in those days were filled with ingenious apparatus in which the surprising effects were produced by skillfully concealed magnets, we shall rather be led to class among such apparatus the so-called "Comus electric telegraph." We find, moreover, in Guyot's _Recreations physiques et mathematiques_--a work whose first edition dates back to the time at which Comus was exhibiting his apparatus--a description of certain communicating dials that seem to be no other than those of the celebrated physicist, and which at all events enables us to understand how they worked.