Ix 



■of a primitive word is expressed by the 

 musical pitch, of the sounds of which it 

 is composed, and passed on to the pro- 

 position that the changes which words 

 undergo in the course of time and under 

 various circumstances are governed by the 

 psychic life of the speaJiere, and are ex- 

 pressed by variations of pitch and em- 

 phasis. "Mr. Kitz contended that in the 

 case of any change in one part of a word, 

 the musical pitch of the other parts was 

 of decisive importance. The conclusions 

 arrived at were, briefly, that there exists 

 in practice a musical scale of speech 

 sounds which embraces all of them ; that 

 consonants are dififerentiated according to 

 meaning and emphasis; that in the pro- 

 cess of adaptation of the parts of the 

 words to each other the direction of least 

 effort is that of approximation to the 

 pitch of the most prominent part; that 

 the changes which words undergo in pass- 

 ing from one vocabulary to another are 

 the elFects of the influence of the psycho- 

 logical character of the people using the 

 ^different vocabularies. Finally, Mr. 



Ritz stated that his theory supplied a 



rational basis for the study of phonetics 

 as a part of ethnology and psychology. 



This paper will be discussed at the next 

 meeting jf the society. 



Colour Photography. 



Mr. A. D. Arundel, an English visitor, 

 delivered a very interesting lecturette on 

 "Colour Photography.'' There was, he 

 said, at present no complete method of 

 colour photography, though experiments 

 iin photographing through coal tar seemed 

 to promise some success. Having de- 

 scribed the three-colour method originally 

 discovered by Clark Maxwell some 40 

 years a.go, and aL&o the superposition 

 method, which was illustrated by lime- 

 light views, the lecturer had some photo- 

 graphs taken by the latter method pro- 

 jected on a screen, and although the con- 

 ditions were unfavourable, the pictures 

 were sufficient to show what progress had 

 been made towards a solution of the pro- 

 blem. 



His Excellency moved a vote of thanks 

 to the contributors of papers, after which 

 proceedings terminated. 



