5 68 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of a medical man conversant with the pa- 

 tient's peculiarities : particularly in the case 

 of children should this precaution be ob- 

 served. 



Meteorological. Professor Loomis con- 

 tinues his investigations of the development 

 and phenomena of storms in the United 

 States, in the July number of the " Ameri- 

 can Journal of Science." In this paper, the 

 eleventh one of the series, it is shown that 

 atmospheric disturbances during storms do 

 not generally extend more than about a mile 

 above the sea-level as they pass over New 

 England. From observations made at the 

 sea-level, as at Portland, simultaneously with 

 observations at the summit of Mount Wash- 

 ington, it is found that during the passage 

 of storms the usual system of circulating 

 winds, does not in a majority of instances 

 extend to a height of six thousand feet. The 

 more violent the movement, however, the 

 greater is the height attained by the disturb- 

 ance. Another fact of interest is that the 

 disturbance on the approach of a storm is 

 felt at the surface sooner than at considera- 

 ble elevations. Professor Loomis says that, 

 "when during the progress of an area of 

 low pressure the system of circulating winds 

 reaches to the summit of Mount Washing- 

 ton, the change of wind to the east quarter 

 usually begins at the surface stations eleven 

 hours sooner than it does on the summit of 

 that mountain." It thus appears that only 

 in the lower portions of the atmosphere do 

 the great storm movements occur, and they 

 are first felt at or near the earth's surface. 



Why is Mnsic pleasurable ? Darwin, in 

 " The Descent of Man," says of the prob- 

 lem, why musical tones in a certain order 

 and rhythm give man and other animals 

 pleasure, that it is at present insoluble. 

 " We can no more give the reason than 

 for the pleasantness of certain tastes and 

 smells." But Mr. Xcnos Clark, in the 

 " American Naturalist," ingeniously essays 

 a solution of this problem, and at the same 

 time offers a theory of the origin of melody. 

 "A musical sound," writes Mr. Clark, "is 

 compound in its structure, being really a 

 group of simple tones heard simultaneously. 

 This group is composed of a ground-tone 

 or fundamental, and a number of overtones, 



that decrease in intensity as they rise in 

 pitch through a series of harmonic intervals. 

 These intervals, the octave, fifth, fourth, 

 and third, which thus occur in every musi- 

 cal sound we hear, are also at the basis of 

 every human and, I hope to show, extra-hu- 

 man melody .... The thought at once 

 arises that the peculiar, compound, har- 

 monic structure of musical sounds has in 

 some way impressed itself upon the audi- 

 tory mechanism ; so that melody, gradually 

 growing under the guidance of the ear thus 

 modified, has been molded into a musical 

 form similar to that possessed by the group 

 of harmonically related tones which we have 

 seen to compose the sounds indicated. This 

 seems very probable. For since each ter- 

 minal nerve, of the thousands in the coch- 

 lea, responds to a given simple tone, the 

 group of such tones forming a musical sound 

 will excite a corresponding group of nerves, 

 which will of course be related among them- 

 selves, as are the exciting tones among 

 themselves ; that is, they will be serially 

 octaves, fifths, fourths, and thirds apart. 

 Every nerve will therefore have always been 

 stimulated in company with certain others, 

 at harmonic intervals from it; and it is 

 inevitable that the incessant and long-con- 

 tinued repetition of this cooperate activity 

 should have resulted in some anatomical 

 or functional bond ; a pathway, as it were, 

 leading from each member of the group to 

 every other. The progress of any melody 

 will be easiest along this harmonic pctthivay, 

 worn by the physical structure of sound." 

 This would be the origin of melody, and at 

 the same time would explain why musical 

 tones in a certain order give man and other 

 animals pleasure. 



The Soeial Relations of the Future. 



The views of Mr. Matthew Arnold on the 

 tendencies of our modern social and po- 

 litical life are very well summed up in a 

 recent number of the " Athenaeum " as fol- 

 lows : The inevitable future Mr. Arnold 

 sees to be democracy: the many are con- 

 tinually growing less and less disposed to 

 admire, and the few, that is the aristocra- 

 cy, are becoming less and less qualified to 

 command and captivate. Now, this is not 

 only a fact, but one we should have foreseen 

 long ago, for it is only an example and as. 



