CENTURY II. 87 



Experiments in consort touching the magnitude and 

 exility and damps of sounds. 



138. Take a trunk, and let one whistle at the 

 one end, and hold your ear at the other, and you 

 shall find the sound strike so sharp as you can scarce 

 endure it. The cause is, for that sound diffuseth 

 itself in round, and so spendeth itself; but if the 

 sound, which would scatter in open air, be made to 

 go all into a canal, it must needs give greater force 

 to the sound. And so you may note, that inclo- 

 sures do not only preserve sound, but also increase 

 and sharpen it. 



139. A hunter s horn being greater at one end 

 than at the other, doth increase the sound more than 

 if the horn were all of an equal bore. The cause is, 

 for that the air and sound being first contracted at 

 the lesser end, and afterwards having more room to 

 spread at the greater end, do dilate themselves ; and 

 in coming out strike more air ; whereby the sound 

 is the greater and baser. And even hunters horns, 

 which are sometimes made straight, and not oblique, 

 are ever greater at the lower end. It would be tried 

 also in pipes,Jbeing made far larger at the lower end ; 

 or being made with a belly towards the lower end, 

 and then issuing into a straight concave again. 



140. There is in St. James s fields a conduit of 

 brick, unto which joineth a low vault ; and at the 

 end of that a round house of stone ; and in the brick 

 conduit there is a window ; and in the round house 

 a slit or rift of some little breath : if you cry out in 



