M. Izarn, Professor of Physics at the Lycée, Clermont, holds that telephonic electric currents may readily be turned aside by the earth, especially if in the course of their passage they encounter metallic conductors, such as gas or water pipes. He writes as follows on the subject, in a paper addressed to the Académie des Sciences, on May 13, 1878:--‘I set up a telephone in the Clermont Lycée with a single wire, more than 50 yards in length, which crosses the court-yard of the Lycée, and goes from the laboratory, where it is suspended to a gas-burner, to a room near the porter’s lodge, where it is suspended to another gas-burner. When I applied my ear to the telephone, I could distinctly hear the telegraphic signals, Morse or otherwise, which came either from the telegraph office at Clermont, or from the telephone office which was at work between the School of Artillery and the butts below Puy-de-Dôme, a distance of eight miles. I could overhear words, and especially the military orders issued at the butts for the purpose of being heard at the school. Yet my wire is perfectly independent of those used for signalling, and is even very remote from them; but as the wires of the telegraph office and of the School of Artillery go to earth at a little distance from the gas-pipes, it is probable that this phenomenon is caused by a diversion of the current produced in my wire, by means of the earth and the network of metal pipes.’ Mr. Preece made the same remark in his notice of ‘some physical points connected with the telephone.’ Again, we read in the ‘Telegraphic Journal’ of June 15, 1878, that in a telephonic concert transmitted from Buffalo to New York, the singers at Buffalo were heard in an office placed outside the telegraphic circuit in which the transmission was effected. On enquiry, it was ascertained that the wire through which the telephonic transmission took place, was at one point in its course close to the one which directly transmitted the musical sounds, but the distance between the two wires was not less than ten feet.