maker, Tomkisson, who acquired Pape's rights for this country. The iron framing in a single casting is a distinctly American invention, but proceeding, like the overstringing, from a German by birth. The iron casting for a square piano of the American Alpheus Babcock, may have suggested Meyer's invention; it was, however, Conrad Meyer, who, in Philadelphia, and in 1833, first made a real iron frame square pianoforte. The gradual improvement upon Meyer's invention, during the next quarter of a century, are first due to the Chickerings and then the Steinways. The former overstrung an iron frame square, the latter overstrung an iron frame grand, the culmination of this special make since of general American and German adoption. It will be seen that, in the American make, the number of tension bars has not been reduced, but a diagonal support has, to a certain extent, been accepted and adopted. The sound-board bridges are much further apart than obtains with the English grand, or with the Anglo-French Erard. The advocates of the American principle point out the advantages of a more open scale, and more equal pressure on the sound-board. They likewise claim, as a gain, a greater tension. I have no quite accurate information as to what the sum of the tension may be of an American grand piano. One of Broadwood's, twenty years ago, had a strain of sixteen and one-half tons; the strain has somewhat increased since then. The remarkable improvement in wiredrawing which has been made in Birmingham, Vienna, and Nuremberg, of late years, has rendered these high tensions of far easier attainment than they would have been earlier in the century. [Illustration: FIG. 3.--BROADWOOD.] For me the great drawback to one unbroken casting is in the vibratory ring inseparable from any metal system that has no resting places to break the uniform reverberation proceeding from metal. We have already seen how readily the strings take up vibrations which are only pure when, as secondary vibrations, they arise by reversion from the sound-board. If vibration arises from imperfectly elastic wood, we hear a dull wooden thud; if it comes from metal, partials of the strings are re-enforced that should be left undeveloped, which give a false ring to the tone, and an after ring that blurs _legato_ playing, and nullifies the _staccato_. I do not pose as the obstinate advocate of parallel stringing, although I believe that, so far, it is the most logical and the best; the best, because the left hand division of the instrument is free from a preponderance of dissonant high partials, and we hear the light and shade, as well as the cantabile of that part, better than by any overstrung scale that I have yet met with. I will not, I say, offer a final judgment, because there may come a possible improvement of the overstrung or double diagonal scale, if that scale is persisted in, and inventive power is brought to bear upon it, as valuable as that which has carried the idea thus far.