To complete this summary account of the telephone, we ought to say that since its success a good many claims of priority have arisen, as if by enchantment. Mr. John Camack, of English origin, has among others claimed the invention of the telephone, not merely relying on the description he gave of the instrument in 1865, but on the drawings he executed; he even adds, that if he had not lacked means for its construction, this would have been the date of the discovery of the telephone. A similar pretension has been put forward by Mr. Dolbear, a fellow countryman of Mr. Bell, of whose claim we shall speak presently. Signor Manzetti, of Aosta, says the same thing, asserting that his telephonic invention was described in several newspapers of 1865, among others in ‘Le Petit Journal,’ of Paris, on the 22nd November, 1865; ‘Il Diritto’ at Rome, 16th July, 1865; ‘L’Echo d’Italia,’ New York, 9th August, 1865; ‘L’Italia,’ Florence, 10th August, 1865; ‘La Comuna d’Italia,’ Genoa, 1st December, 1865; ‘La Verità,’ Novara, 4th January, 1866; ‘Il Commercio,’ Genoa, 6th January, 1866. It is true that no description of the system was given, and that the journals in question only asserted that experiments had been made, which proved that the practical solution of the problem of transmitting speech by electricity became possible by this system. At any rate M. Charles Bourseul must still have the credit of the priority of the idea, and, in our opinion, all claims made after the fact only merit slight consideration. Before considering Bell’s telephone, and the different modifications which have been applied to it, it seems worth while, in order to make the reader perfectly familiar with these kinds of instruments, to study the electro-musical telephones which preceded it, and especially that of M. Reiss, which was made in 1860, and became the starting point of all the others. We shall find that these instruments have very important applications, and that telegraphy will probably be one day much advanced by their use. MUSICAL TELEPHONES. _Telephone of M. Reiss._--This telephone is, as far as the reproduction of sound is concerned, based upon Mr. Page’s discoveries in 1837, and, as regards electric transmission, it is based on the vibrating membrane of which Mr. L. Scott made use in his phonautograph, in 1855. This instrument is composed, like telegraphic systems, of two distinct parts, a sender and a receiver, as represented in fig. 1. [Illustration: FIG. 1.]