THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



MAY, 1873. 



WAVE -ACTION IN NATURE. 



THE waves upon water are always objects of pleasing interest. 

 From the ripples of the pond to the billows of the ocean, their 

 beauty and their sublimity are sources of perennial inspiration to the 

 poet and the painter. But there is an invisible realm of air- waves 

 of a far subtler and more wonderful order. The water-waves belong 

 to the sensuous eye and to art, but the aerial pulsations belong to the 

 eye of the imagination and to science, the great revelator of the super- 

 sensuous harmonies of the universe. Water-waves afford an agreeable 

 spectacle, and have little further concern for us ; but the waves of air 

 take hold of our highest life, for the multitudinous sounds of Nature 

 by which we are soothed and exhilarated, all the delights of music, 

 the pleasures of speech, and the sweet experiences of social intercourse, 

 are made possible only through their agency. Besides, air-waves form 

 one link in the chain of agencies by which we pass from the material to 

 the spiritual world. The first is the capacity by which matter may be 

 thrown into vibration; second, the properties of air by which it can 

 take up the impulses of vibration in the form of waves ; third, those 

 properties of the mechanism of hearing by which it can take up the 

 motion of air-pulses ; and, fourth, those properties of nerves by which 

 they can take up the tympanic vibrations and translate them into 

 feeling or consciousness. How the last step is effected we do not 

 know, but many of the preliminary conditions to it are understood, 

 and to some of these we ask the reader's attention. 



All sound begins in those collisions and attritions among material 

 things by which their parts are thrown into tremors. These are al- 

 most as various in quality as the properties of material substances. 

 The sounds we hear are but indices to the vibrations of bodies from 

 which they proceed, and the multitude of such terms as splash, roar, 

 ring, thud, crack, whiz, squeak, crash, illustrate the marvellous diver- 

 sity of characters which material vibrations may take. In the pro- 

 tol. in. 1 



