162 ANNUAL. REPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1932 



Keaction to noise is no doubt largely temperamental, and acute- 

 ness of hearing varies widely in different people. There are those 

 to whom noise is absolute anathema. It is stated, for example, 

 that Carlyle had a sound-proof room to work in, and again that 

 Edison was inclined to attribute to the quietness with which his deaf- 

 ness had invested him, much of his success in finding solutions to his 

 problems. According to Professor Spooner, Herbert Spencer used 

 to plug his ears with cotton- wool and even went the length of declar- 

 ing that " you might gauge a man's intellectual capacity by the 

 degree of his intolerance of unnecessary noises." 



Such sensitivity to noise may be bound up with the fact that even 

 a limited exposure to very loud noises — such as on an airplane flight — 

 has the effect of making some people partly deaf for some minutes 

 or even hours after the noise ceases. 



It appears to be the case, however, that many people get used to 

 noisy surroundings and adjust themselves unconsciously to the con- 

 ditions. The man whose house abuts on the railway becomes in- 

 different to the noise of a passing train, no longer notices it, has 

 acquired a " habit " of noise in fact. There are those who, accus- 

 tomed to sleep with a clock in their bedrooms, wake up if it stops 

 ticking. One hears, too, of people used to sleeping in the hubbub 

 of a town who can not court slumber in the quietness of the country. 

 O. Henry, for example, sang the praises of the pandemonium of the 

 city streets. In his Adventures of Neurasthenia he protested that 

 he could not sleep without the comforting lullaby of noise, and that 

 the silence of the country was so deep that he could " hear the grass 

 blades sharpening themselves against each other." 



It is even claimed that a love of noise has become common and 

 chronic in America, much as in the Latin countries; and the fact 

 that children love noise, at any rate of their own making,^ is ad- 

 vanced in favor of the view that a feeling for noise is bred in the 

 bone, born out of the fact that noise must have been an indispensable 

 friend of primitive man in his hunting and fighting. Indeed, it is 

 suggested that one's " jump " or response to a sudden strident or dis- 

 cordant noise is a survival of the old instinctive reaction to a menacing 

 danger. Be that as it may, it is no doubt a fact that a great many 

 people are partial to mixed " musical noises," particularly in their 

 lighter moments. The haters of jazz, on the other hand, seek to 

 associate such a liking with immaturity, arrested education, or even 

 worse ! 



' This applies also to children of a larger growth. A man hammering, for example, 

 finds the noise much less trying than do his neighbors. It would seem that the ear auto- 

 matically desensitizes itself temporarily when it is aware of the impending arrival of a 

 loud Bound. 



