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Phil's Old and Odd Brass Collection:
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Dragon Bell Ophiclide c.1820
On a family vacation in June 2007, we were most privileged to be given a behind the scene tour of the Musical Instrument Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City by Joe Peknik, Technical Curator. 

This extraordinary horn is an opheclide - a brass forerunner to the tuba family - but which uses saxophone - like keys to shorten and lengthen the conical tube to create a chromatic scale.   Unlike the saxophone, the sound is generated by the vibration of the air column by the player's lips using a mouthpiece.

This specific instrument hails back to the earliest sackbuts where the bells were sometimes configured as a dragon's head complete with teeth (and even a wagging tongue on this one!!).

I unfortunately could not persuade Joe and the Met to part with this baby - so the best I can do is to add it to my Cyber Museum as an especially interesting example of an early tuba-like instrument.