Although the words pronounced by this machine are distinct, they are spoken in a uniform, drawling tone, which might, I should have thought, have excluded the idea of imposition. Some of them are indeed far from distinct, yet the results are not less remarkable; and when we consider the amount of study and experience which must have been applied to the combination of all these arrangements, it seems surprising that physicists have not given more attention to such an interesting machine. As for the mechanical execution, it is impossible to admire too highly the simple and ingenious manner in which all the complicated movements of the different vocal organs have been connected with the keyboard, of which the mechanism has been so calculated as only to produce the precise action of the organ which is required for any given effect. For this purpose, the notes of the keyboard regularly increase in length, so as to produce at a single touch different mechanical effects on the rods which act upon the mechanism; and since most of the notes are required to react simultaneously on the whole mechanism, the rods which transmit the movement are fastened to a series of jointed levers which cross the notes of the keyboard at right angles. Pegs of different length are fastened to the notes at this junction, so as to produce the simultaneous action of the different organs of the machine. The public will believe that the assertions of ventriloquism are unfounded when I add that I myself have made the machine speak. APPENDIX. _The Perrodon System of Telephonic Alarum._--Captain Perrodon, of the French Artillery, has lately improved the system invented by MM. Dutertre and Gouault, by a self-acting call. For this purpose he has fastened a spring contact before the diaphragm, combined with the diaphragm and the electro-magnetic system so as to form a vibrator. The vibrations thus produced are strong enough to resound in an ordinary telephone, so as to make the call audible in spite of external noises. The system has been arranged in different ways. In one arrangement, a small plate of tinfoil is glued to the outer surface of the diaphragm, and the end of the telephone coil wire is connected, below the inner surface of the mouthpiece, with a silver wire soldered to a spring plate, which constitutes the contact of the vibrator. This spring plate, slightly curved, is fixed below one of the binding-screws of the telephone, and terminates at its free end in a regulating screw by which the interval between the contacts can be regulated, and the instrument can be arranged as a telephonic organ. To do this, the screw can be withdrawn, and inserted in a nut which establishes direct connection between the line and the telephone coil. It is easy to adapt an ordinary telephone to this system.