ce was so beautiful that
her children tried to store it in a bamboo cane, which was carefully
sealed up. Long after she was dead the cane was opened, and her voice
came out in all its sweetness, but was never heard again. A similar
idea (which reminds us of Munchausen's trumpet) is found in the NATURAL
MAGICK of John Baptista Porta, the celebrated Neapolitan philosopher,
and published at London in 1658. He proposes to confine the sound of
the voice in leaden pipes, such as are used for speaking through; and he
goes on to say that 'if any man, as the words are spoken, shall stop the
end of the pipe, and he that is at the other end shall do the like, the
voice may be intercepted in the middle, and be shut up as in a prison,
and when the mouth is opened, the voice will come forth as out of his
mouth that spake it.... I am now upon trial of it. If before my book
be printed the business take effect, I will set it down; if not, if
God please, I shall write of it elsewhere.' Porta also refers to the
speaking head of Albertus Magnus, whom, however, he discredits. He
likewise mentions a colossal trumpeter of brass, stated to have been
erected in some ancient cities, and describes a plan for making a kind
of megaphone, 'wherewith we may hear many miles.'

In the VOYAGE A LA LUNE of De Cyrano Bergerac, published at Paris in
1650, and subsequently translated into English, there is a long account
of a 'mechanical book' which spoke its contents to the listener. 'It was
a book, indeed,' says Cyrano, 'but a strange and wonderful book, which
had neither leaves nor letters,' and which instructed the Youth in their
walks, so that they knew more than the Greybeards of Cyrano's country,
and need never lack the company of all the great men living or dead to
entertain them with living voices. Sir David Brewster surmised that a
talking machine mould be invented before the end of the century. Mary
Somerville, in her CONNECTION OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES, wrote some
fifty years ago: 'It may be presumed that ultimately the utterances or
pronunciation of modern languages will be conveyed, not only to the eye,
but also to the ear of posterity. Had the ancients possessed the means
of transmitting such definite sounds, the civilised world must have
responded in sympathetic notes at the distance of many ages.' In the
MEMOIRES DU GEANT of M. Nadar, published in 1864, the author says:
'These last fifteen years I have amused myself in thinking there is
not