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Otago Daily Times, Issue 1152, 30 August 1865, Page 5

A very clever invention hag just been i patented by aMr Alfred Long, who 3ias 1 perfected a metabolical machine for aiding adults to acquire the po^er ot speaking 1 foreign tongues grammatically and idioma- < tically without grammars. The machine < is very ingenious, and affords a never-end-ing power of varying exercises upon a few words. Take a sentence of five words— { " When can your brother come ?" "How ( can her sister go ?" These two sentences c contain 32 variations of the same length. t The words are written on four faces of a t cube, and five cubes are placed in a box of £ five stalls, one side of the box being of '] glass. By shaking and turning over the j box the faces of the cubes seen through the glass are changed at hazard, giving \ different verbal variations of the phrase. t The great use of the machine is the variety <; which it could enable a teacher of languages j to give, and the interest which by its aid \ he could excite in his pupils. - j A general election, it is alleged, costs 1 two millions of money, which, divided among the members of the House of Com- i mons, would saddle each individual M.P. ( with an expenditure of more than three ! thousand pounds. Some elections cost a 1 good deal more. - <