8 Mr Weber on the Polarisation of Sound. 



remarkable degree, as Mr Pictet did, all the qualities which 

 constitute perfection. Tall and handsome in his person, 

 elegant in his manners, lively and gay in his conversation, he 

 gained the affections of those who were unable to judge of his 

 more solid acquirements. Those graces of his external na- 

 ture, however, served only as the ornaments of his intellectual 

 and moral frame. He was acquainted with most of the living 

 languages. He was a musician, an astronomer, a mineralo- 

 gist, a natural philosopher, and fan elegant writer. Quick of 

 apprehension, he did more in a day than others did in a week. 

 He was at all times fit for labour, and, during fifty years of 

 his life, he was the soul of all the improvements in the arts, in 

 the schools, and in the philanthrophic establishments of his na- 

 tive city. To these qualities he added those of the most un- 

 affected piety, and of unbounded charity. He was a Christian 

 in'heart and in practice. The death of such a man must, in 

 any country, be a public loss ; but in a small community like 

 Geneva it is irreparable ; and centuries may elapse before the 

 high accomplishments and estimable qualities of M. Pictet 

 are again united in the same individual. * 



Art. II. — On the Polarisation of Sound, in a different man- 

 ner from that described by Mr Wheatstone. By W. 

 Weber, j- 



A pitchpipe sounds strongest when its broad side is turned 

 to the ear, but the tone is nearly as strong when the pitchpipe 

 is turned 90° round the axle of its handle, so that both the 

 small sides of both branches become parallel to the shell of the 

 ear, while it might be expected that the weakest undulations of 

 sound would be conveyed to the ear by the vibration of these 

 parallel-sided branches. These strong spreadings of the sound, 

 in two directions, forming a right angle to each other, does not 

 depend upon the form and position of the terminating planes 



* For the principal facts in this biographical sketch, we have been in- 

 debted to the Eloge of M. Pictet, by M. Vaucher, in the Bibl. Univers. 

 torn. xxix. p. 65. 



t Translated from Schweigger's Jahrbuch der Chemie und Phytik, 

 b. xvii. heft. J. 1926, p. 108. 



