PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 29 



CORK SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY SOCIETY. 



JANUARY 4, 1855. 



WILLIAM DOWDEN, Esq., V.P., in the Chair. 

 Mr. R. Dowden read a paper, entitled 



NOTES ON SOME FAMILIAR FACTS CONNECTED WITH SOUNDS AND HEARING. 



Sounds are much affected in the impressions they make by comparison and by 

 attention. It is known that sounds at night are heard much more distinctly than 

 by day that is, when the places where they are made are liable to the noise and 

 bustle of day activity, and when these noises and bustle subsiding, leave the stillness 

 of night to permit the conveyance of sounds undisturbedly. 



That sounds can be drowned by noise we all know ; Ei chard the Third cries out 

 " Strike up drums, let not the heavens hear these tell-tale women rail on the Lord's 

 anointed." Sometimes, in the calm evening, we hear distant music, which, by day, 

 we could not hear, or distinguish so clearly. Some conditions of the air are 

 described as being more favourable than others for the transmission of sounds ; 

 but that subject I do not now enter upon ; comparison is my principal topic. 

 Let any person go from Fleet- street, in London, to Ludgate-hill, and he 

 will, of course, observe an increase of uproar ; but if he proceed from 

 Lincoln's-Inn Fields, and compare its quietness with Holborn-hill, at mid- 

 day, the contrast will be very remarkable. Taking a tour for another in- 

 stance, let me come home, and tell you, that the reduction between the distances 

 from the pitch of one noise to another, has here presented curious effects. In a 

 masquerade- room, in Cork, there were some thousand or fifteen hundred 

 masquers talking, shouting, singing ; so that the very undertone or buzz of the 

 room had a certain amount of general elevation. One gentleman, who perfigurated 

 as Cornet Allopod, the sportsman and yeomanry apothecary in the play of " The 

 Poor Gentleman," came in his cavalry dress, red, turned up with " rhubarb- 

 coloured lappets ;" and, intending to cause a sensation, he let fly one barrel of his 

 fowling-piece ; when what was his astonishment to find that, pooh, it made no 

 more noise than a good popgun ; this was too bad ; he thought he had not ram- 

 med down his charge ; and, being resolved on gaining distinction, he fired his other 

 barrel ; alas, he had the same result ; he won no applause, no more than if he 

 had clapped his hands together ; but he thus learned, experimentally, the acous- 

 tical fact, that the nature of our sound-perceptions are much influenced by 

 comparison. 



Eaising the pitch of sound has another effect worthy of a little notice ; deafish 

 persons can sometimes hear a little when they are addressed in a noise. There are 

 probably two reasons for this fact firstly, that the nerves of hearing may be 

 somewhat stimulated out of their inertia by noise, and thus may be made suscep- 

 tible. When hearing is promoted by beating a drum or braying a trumpet at a 

 deafish ear, this may be one provocative to audition ; but there is also another 

 cause for this effect in our common conversation with persons " hard of hear- 

 ing," we scream some of our words, and then we drop into low cadences ; in this 

 way we disturb, but do not satisfy, the obtuse hearer. Now, if we travel in a 

 carriage, whose roll demands of the converser a steady, equable elevation of pitch, 

 we are more likely to be heard than when we are at liberty to make fitful changes, 

 from shouting to whispering. 



The next acoustic circumstance which has a marked result is, attention. We 

 know that the ticking of a clock, and other habitually heard noises, cease to engage 

 our notice, except we choose to attend ; but sometimes the same sound seems much 

 louder when intensely observed than when treated with indifference. 



There is an echo which can be awaked within " Gleana Coppuil" " The 

 Horse's Glen" in Mangerton Mountain ; this is a reverberatory percussion of the 

 sound made ; and, of course, at every point whence it is reflected, some loss of the 

 VOL. II. d 



