38 



NATURE 



{May 9, 1878 



author's name into confounding the present book with 

 one on 'the same subject published many years ago by 

 Capt. Thomas Brown. 



OUR BOOK SHELF 

 The Gold-Mines of Midian and the Ruined Midianite 

 Cities. A Fortnights Tour in North-Western Arabia. 

 By Richard F. Burton. (London : Kegan Paul and 

 Co., 1878.) 



Captain Burton has managed to make a wonderfully 

 interesting and really valuable book out of his fortnight's 

 visit to the ancient land of Midian, on the north-east side 

 of the Red Sea, on and to the south of the Gulf of 

 Akabah. Long ago he had good reason to believe that 

 in this region gold was to be found, but only in March 

 and April of last year was he able to test his surmise, 

 under the auspices and at the expense of the Khedive. 

 The result of this visit is that he is satisfied that there 

 exists a real Ophir, a regular California, extensively 

 worked in ancient times, and whose valuable product is 

 probably not unkno\vn to the tribes who haunt it at the 

 present day. Not only gold exists there, but vast deposits 

 of iron, with copper, tin, and other metals — in fact a wel- 

 come treasure-house for the impecunious Khedive. Capt. 

 Burton has hopes that modern Midian, now almost a 

 desert, may yet rival the ancient land from whose people the 

 Israelites, in the exercise of their divine vocation, carried 

 off " the gold and the silver, the brass, the iron, the tin, the 

 lead." Capt. Burton made a minute inspection of some 

 of the ancient sites, and has a good deal to say on the 

 archaeology of the region, as well as its zoology, botany, 

 and geology. But the book is not nearly all on the land 

 of Midian. From the time that the author left Trieste 

 for Alexandria and Cairo, by Suez to Midian, till his return, 

 he saw many things on which, in his own digressive and 

 parenthetical style, he [.has much to say that is worth 

 listening to. Capt. Burton has just returned from another 

 visit to Midian, and no doubt we shall soon have another 

 work or an enlarged edition of the present. 



To the Arctic Regions and Back in Six Weeks, being a 

 Summer Tour to Lapland and Norway, with Notes on 

 Sport and Natural History. By Capt. A. W. M. 

 Clark Kennedy. Map and numerous Illustrations. 

 (London : Sampson Low and Co., 1878). 



The title of Capt. Kennedy' s pleasant volume is rather 

 misleading ;' before looking into it we thought he would 

 take us as far as Spitzbergen at least, and felt somewhat 

 **sold" when we found his journey ended at TromsOj in the 

 north of Norway, which, though within the Arctic Circle, 

 is not usually spoken of as in the Arctic Regions. Still 

 Capt. Kennedy's book is thoroughly readable, and though 

 it will add little to our knowledge of Norway or of the 

 Lapps, will prove valuable to any one contemplating a 

 visit to that now much-frequented tourist ground. 



LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 



[The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed 

 by his correspondents. Neither can he undertake to return, 

 or to correspond with the writers of, rejected manuscripts. 

 No notice is taken of anonymous communications. 



[The Editor urgently requests correspondents to keep thdr letters at 

 short as possible. The pressure on his space is so great that it 

 is impossible etherwise to ensure the appearance even of com' 

 munications containing interesting and novel facts.l 



Eastward Progress of Terrestrial Magnetism 

 As the progress of weather eastwards is one of the subjects 

 -now engaging attention, while the possible connection between 

 meteorological and magnetical phenomena is another, we are 

 led to ask if there be no traces of an eastward progress in cer- 

 tain of the phenomena of terrestrial magnetism. 



I cannot yet affirm that such is the case, but it may interest 

 your readers to know that, as far as a preliminary investigation 

 goes, there are some indications of such a progress when we 

 compare together the Declination-ranges at Kew and at Trevan- 

 drum. It will, however, require a more thorough discussion 

 before the fact can be considered as at all established. 



Manchester, May 4 B. Stewart 



The Phonograph 



Since writing my former letter on the phonograph {NATURE, 

 vol. xvii. p. 485) I have had the advantage of seeing some of 

 the work that Prof. Fleeming Jenkin is doing with his own 

 instrument, which must, I think, be more sensitive than the one 

 I examined. This work convinces me that the phonograph has 

 already risen beyond the rank of lecture illustrations and philo- 

 sophical toys, to which I assigned it in my last, and that it 

 promises to lay some permanent foundations for the more accu- 

 rate investigation of the nature of speech sounds. Prof. 

 Fleeming Jenkin, by a most ingenious arrangement, which I must 

 leave him to describe inhis paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 

 obtains vertical sections of the impressions made on the tin-foil 

 by the point of the phonograph, magnified 400 diameters. Some 

 of these original tracings I had the pleasure of seeing yesterday, 

 and they are full of interest. I have termed them "speech 

 ciuves." They differ considerably from the phonautographic 

 speech-ciu^es of Leon Scott and Koenig, which only succeeded 

 with the vowels, and from the logographic speech-curves of Mr. 

 Barlow, which only succeeded with the consonants, in so much 

 as they succeed with both. In such a word as tah, for example, 

 intoned rather than sung, but not simply spoken, as the vowel 

 would otherwise not last long enough for subsequent study, we 

 have first the " preparation," in which the curve gradually, but 

 irregularly, rises, then the "attack," where there is generally a 

 bold serrated precipice, with nxunerous rather sudden valleys ; 

 next the " glide " where there is a perfect tumult of curvatures 

 arising from the passage of voice through a continually changing 

 resonance chamber, producing a rapidly and continuously chang- 

 ing but indistinct series of vowel sounds, which gradually settle 

 down into the "vowel " proper. In the vowel, if well intoned^ 

 the curve remains constant for a considerable number of periods, 

 beautifully reproducing itself, but, as the intoner becomes 

 exhausted, "vanishing" away gradually to silence, the distinc- 

 tive peculiarities of the curve disappearing one by one, till a 

 dead level is again reached. 



Then Prof. Fleeming Jenkin subjects this vowel curve to 

 "analysis," reducing it to the separate "pendular" curves of 

 which it can be composed. This corresponds to determining the 

 "partial" tones {parzialtone, theilt'dne of Helmholtz, of which 

 all but the lowest are called oberparzialtbne, obertheiltone, and by 

 contraction obertone, whence the unfortunate English word over- 

 tones, which is constantly confused •w\\h. partials, thus assuming a 

 part for the whole) out of which the whole " compound" tone is 

 formed. The first two partials are much stronger than the rest,, 

 the second often stronger than the first (hence the frequent con- 

 fusion of octave ?), the others generally very weak, although ex- 

 ceptionally one of the higher partials may be stronger. As many 

 as five partials, as far as I remember, were traced out in the 

 analysis Prof. Jenkin showed me, which he had just received 

 from Edinbiu-gh. The results differ materially for different 

 speakers. Also there is a pecuharity in the "phase" with 

 which the different partials enter into combination. Helmholtz: 

 showed that this difference of phase would materially alter the 

 form of the curve, but would not alter the appreciation of quality 

 by the ear depending upon the actual partials and their degrees 

 of loudness alone. 



The phonograph, as I have said, resembles rather a worni 

 " print " than a " proof " of the human voice. This means, of 

 course, that the delicate upper partials, on whichj all brilliancy 

 depends, are absent. In some respects this is advantageous 

 for the very elaborate inquiry which Prof. Fleeming Jenkin has- 

 instituted, for it enables him to catch the bold outlines on. 

 which genera depend, without being at first bewildered by the. 

 delicate details which give specific differences. Our speech 

 sounds are, of coiuse, individual, and what is recognised as the- 

 same speech sound varies in the same speaker within the limits 

 of its genus, almost every time it is used. We shall do muck 

 if we establish the genus. The extent of Prof. Jenkin's 

 researches, as he contemplates them, and the care with which 



