TWENTY-SIXTH ANNUAL MEETING. 9 



also the t fleet cu the bullet at the instant when it strikes the target, or at 

 various stages of its passage through an oak plank. 



Wheat.stone has isolated by the revolving mirrors the one-millionth of 

 a second, and the photographic plate records the phenomena that take place 

 in these short intervals of time. They are accurately measured. With such 

 delicate apparatus it is possible to record the history of the first three or four 

 millicntus of a second at the beginning of a phenomenon and also at the 

 close. In this line what an inviting field for investigation. 



What advances in study have become possible since Muybridge has suc- 

 ceeded so admirably in photographing animals in motion. 



The waves of sound are considered to be coarse waves. They require 

 air for their propagation. Pump all the air out of this room and you might 

 ring the great bell of Moscow and no sound would be heard. Has it not 

 occurred to all tberf> are sounds both too high and too low for us to recognize 

 with the hearing apparatus with which we are endowed? Our ability in this 

 direction depends on the delicacy of the organs of hearing. We hear some 

 of the sounds that agitate the air, but how many sounds are there so ex- 

 quisitely fine that they are never heard? You can hear the voice of the 

 mosquito as fine as a cambric needle, but is that not nearly at the end of your 

 scale? What a vast orchestra may be playing about us at this very moment, 

 while their music is as completely lost as the fourteenthly of the pastor's 

 sermon upon the sleeping deacon. These are the little sounds. We may 

 sometime invent instruments suitable to enable us to detect the unheard 

 sounds. «. 



The deep tones of nature can be heard and appreciated by some better than 

 by others. The roar of Niagara and the crash of the avalanche is the sub- 

 limest of music if we hear it aright. We must catch the harmonic tones of 

 the cataract's roar and the dying echoes of the crashing ice torrents as they 

 are huiled from the icy walls of the mountain valley. 



But we should not call upon the sense of sight and of hearing alone to 

 testify to the capacity of the human body for minute investigation. The 

 sense of smell and the sense of taste have been too long neglected. We have 

 continual evidence of the delicacy of the sense of smell. I need not refer 

 you to the oft quoted assertion that a grain of musk will scent a room for a 

 scor.? of years, and yet not lose appreciably in weight. Still, can we account 

 for the dissemination of this odor on any other theory than that the minute 

 particles have actually left the original grain of musk and are floating about 

 in the air? We cannot catch them nor weigh them, yet the nose will tell 

 us whore the sweet or disagreeable odor is, and it is an unfailing monitor. 

 In the present state of development of this sense, however, the lower an- 

 imals far outdo man. But this greater sensitiveness is without doubt largely 

 due to the more extensive tise of the organ of smell by the lower animal. 

 Man has cultivated the sense of sight and of hearing; he has learned to ap- 

 preciate the beautiful in art and in music, but he has regarded as entirely 

 beneath his notice those senses that contribute so much to his happiness. 

 What will recall the old home kitchen more quickly than a whiff of some 

 long-forgotten odor? Can you ever smell the fragrant hickory-nut shell 

 without being reminded of the tall tree yoti boys used to climb in the mellow 

 October Saturday afternoons? Can you smell the old-fashioned marigold or 

 four-o'clock without seeing some kitchen garden tended by a spinster aunt 

 of your acquaintance? '' 



There are no senses that are quicker to respond to suggestions than these 



