about an ounce,
and can be carried in a vest-pocket. In fact, a cabinet organ is simply
an accordeon of immense power and improved mechanism. Twenty years ago,
one of our melodeon-makers chanced to observe that the accordeon
produced a better tone when it was drawn out than when it was pushed in;
and this fact suggested the first great improvement in the melodeon.
Before that time, the wind from the bellows, in all melodeons, was
forced through the reeds. Melodeons on the improved principle were
constructed so that the wind was drawn through the reeds. The credit of
introducing this improvement is due to the well-known firm of Carhart,
Needham, & Co., and it was as decided an improvement in the melodeon as
the introduction of the hammer in the harpsichord.

At this point of development, the instrument was taken up by Messrs.
Mason and Hamlin, who have covered it with improvements, and rendered it
one of the most pleasing musical instruments in the possession of
mankind. When we remarked above, that the American piano was the best in
the world, we only expressed the opinion of others; but now that we
assert the superiority of the American cabinet organ over similar
instruments made in London and Paris, we are communicating knowledge of
our own. Indeed, the superiority is so marked that it is apparent to the
merest tyro in music. During the year 1866, the number of these
instruments produced in the United States by the twenty-five
manufacturers was about fifteen thousand, which were sold for one
million six hundred thousand dollars, or a little more than one hundred
dollars each. Messrs. Mason and Hamlin, who manufacture one fourth of
the whole number, produce thirty-five kinds, varying in power, compass,
and decoration, and in price from seventy-five dollars to twelve
hundred. In the new towns of the great West, the cabinet organ is
usually the first instrument of music to arrive, and, of late years, it
takes its place with the piano in the fashionable drawing-rooms of the
Atlantic States.

Few Americans, we presume, expected that the department of the Paris
Exposition in which the United States should most surpass other nations
would be that appropriated to musical instruments. Even our cornets and
bugles are highly commended in Paris. The cabinet organs, according to
several correspondents, are much admired. We can hardly credit the
assertion of an intelligent correspondent of the Tribune, that the
superiority of the