96 OX THE PHYSIOLOGICAL CAUSES OF 



eluded mass of air is brought into violent sympathetic 

 vibration, and the ear thus connected with it hears the 

 corresponding tone with much increased intensity. By 

 this means it is extremely easy to determine whether the 

 proper tone of the globe is or is not contained in a 

 compound tone or mass of tones. 



On examining the vowels of the human voice, it is easy 

 to recognise^ with the help of such resonators as have just 

 been described, that the upper partial tones of each vowel 

 are peculiarly strong in certain parts of the scale : thus 

 in ore has its upper partials in the neighbourhood of 

 b' b, A in father in the neighbourhood of b" fe (an octave 

 higher). The following gives a general view of those 

 portions of the scale where the upper partials of the 

 vowels, as pronounced in the north of Germany, are par- 

 ticularly strong. 



1 The corresponding English vowel sounds are probably none of them 

 precisely the same as those pronounced by the author. It is necessary to 

 note this, for a very slight variation in pronunciation would produce a 

 change in the fundamental tone, and consequently a more considerable 

 change in the position of the upper partials. The tones given by Bonders, 

 which are written below the English equivalents, are cited on the authority 

 of Helmholtz's Tonempfindungen, 3rd edition, 1870, p. 171, where Helm- 

 holtz says : ' Donders's results differ somewhat from mine, partly because 

 his refer to a Dutch, and mine to a North German pronunciation, and partly 

 because Bonders, not having had the assistance of tuning forks, could net 

 always correctly determine the octave to which the sounds belong.' Ako 

 (ib. p. 167) the author remarks that b" h answers only to the deep German 

 a (which is the broad Scotch a\ or aw without labialisation), and that if the 

 brighter Italian a (English a in father) be used, the resonance rises a third, 

 to d'". Br. C. L. Merkel, of Leipzig, in his Physioloc/ie der menschlichcn 



