PROFESSOR BELL: Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Society of Telegraph Engineers. It is to-night my pleasure, as well as duty, to give you some account of the telephonic researches in which I have been so long engaged. Many years ago my attention was directed to the mechanism of speech by my father, Alexander Melville Bell, of Edinburgh, who has made a life-long study of the subject. Many of those present may recollect the invention by my father of a means of representing, in a wonderfully accurate manner, the positions of the vocal organs in forming sounds. Together we carried on quite a number of experiments, seeking to discover the correct mechanism of English and foreign elements of speech, and I remember especially an investigation in which we were engaged concerning the musical relations of vowel sounds. When vowel sounds are whispered, each vowel seems to possess a particular pitch of its own, and by whispering certain vowels in succession a musical scale can be distinctly perceived. Our aim was to determine the natural pitch of each vowel; but unexpected difficulties made their appearance, for many of the vowels seemed to possess a double pitch—one due, probably, to the resonance of the air in the mouth, and the other to the resonance of the air contained in the cavity behind the tongue, comprehending the pharynx and larynx. I hit upon an expedient for determining the pitch which at that time I thought to be original with myself. It consisted in vibrating a tuning-fork in front of the mouth while the positions of the vocal organs for the various vowel sounds were silently taken. It was found that each vowel position caused the reinforcement of some particular fork or forks. I wrote an account of these researches to Mr. Alex. J. Ellis, of London, whom I have very great pleasure in seeing here to-night. In reply he informed me that the experiments related had already been performed by Helmholtz, and in a much more perfect manner than I had done. Indeed, he said that Helmholtz had not only analysed the vowel sounds into their constituent musical elements, but had actually performed the synthesis of them.