[ 37 ] 

 JV. On the Cause of audible Sound in vilrallng Strings, 

 Tuning- Forks, &c,; on ike Use oj Hawkins's Moutk 

 Tuning- Forks ; on Earl Stanhope's proposed Steel 

 Piano^- Forte Strings, &'c. By a Cokrespokdent. 



To Mr. Tilloch. 

 Sir, X hat surprising individual, Mr. John Gough of 

 Middleshaw, v\ho though untbrlunately deprived of sight, 

 from his infancy I bcheve, has in a reniole corner of the 

 kingdom, acquired a deep knowledge of mathematics and 

 natural philosophy, which he often displays in Mr. Nichol- 

 son's respectable Journal, and who in the 1st and 2d octavo 

 volumes of that work, successfully combated the subtil ties 

 of a most learned LL.D. and F.K.S. who had shortly be- 

 fore availed himself (rather unfairly) of his facilities of ac- 

 cess to the Philosopliical Transactions, to run down that ex- 

 cellent and unparalk led work on Sounds, the " Harmonics" 

 of the late Dr. Robert Smith of Cambridge; has in the last 

 number of Mr. Nicholson's Journal, given a paper, uhereia 

 he shows bv an experiment on a musical string, one end of 

 which was fastened to the tup of a table, and the other to a 

 small cylinder of wood held in the hand, and by which the 

 string was tight pulled, at the same time that it was set in 

 vibrating rnotion, that the pulses excited in the ear by the 

 sound, do not proceed direct fromthe string, as most if not 

 every writer oil acoustics have represented to be the case, 

 but/rom the flints of wood in the table, agitated by the vi- 

 brations of the string, analogously to the strokes of a drum- 

 stick on its parch m'^cnt cover, or the fingers on that of a 

 tamborine, l)ut repeated with extreme quickness and regu- 

 larity. In further conlirmation of this ingenious conclusion 

 of Mr. Gousih, I beg to mention to your masical readers, 

 a fact, which without doubt many of them must have often 

 noticed, viz. that a tuning-fork gives out no audible sound, 

 after that excited by the mere stroke given to it, while held 

 in the hand; and that it is essential, to rest the end of its 

 handle on a table or iirm piece of wood to hear its tone; 

 and in order that this tone may be clear and perfect, it is 

 best to have the end of the handle of a tuning-fork wrought 

 to a blunt point, that it tnay have only one, and that a firm 

 bearing on the wood, for if knobbed or flat at the end, as 

 they are too often made for sale, they are apt to chatter or 

 give a jarring and imerruptcd sound. 



Mr. J. J. Hawkins of Great Titchfield-strcet, is mentioned 

 in the article Concert Pitch'm Dr. Rees's New Cyclopaedia, 

 to have applied this principle, of the tuning-fork exciting 

 other bodies to sound, to avoid the disagreeable sight, sound 

 and effects of a tuning-fork when struck on a table or other 



