454 



NATURE 



\jAugUSt 22, 1878 



either directly by the action of floods, or by the indirect but no 

 less fatal influence of imperfect drainage — when it is remembered 

 that a heavy flood, such as that of last year, or that of the 

 summer of 1875, entailed a monetary loss of several millions 

 sterling in the three kingdoms — that during every year a quantity 

 of water flows to waste, representing an available motive power 

 worth certainly not less than some hundreds of thousands of 

 pounds, — that there is a constant annual expenditure of enor- 

 mous amounts for removing dibris from navigable channels, the 

 accumulation of which could be mainly, if not entirely pre- 

 vented, — that the supply of food to our rapidly growing popu- 

 lation, dependent, as it is at present, upon sources outside the 

 country, would be enormously increased by an adequate protec- 

 tion of the fisheries, — that the same supply would be further 

 greatly increased by the extra production of the land when 

 increased facilities for drainage are afforded, — that, above all, 

 the problem of our national water supply, to which public at- 

 tention has of late been drav»'n by H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, 

 requires for its solution investigations of the widest possible 

 nature, I believe it will be allowed that the question, as a whole, 

 of the management of rivers is of sufficient importance to make 

 it worthy of being dealt with by new laws to be framed in its 

 exclusive behalf. 



I do not wish it to be understood that in suggesting the collec- 

 tion of additional data relating to the phenomena of rivers, I 

 am advocating delay in dealing with the existing state of things 

 until the facts have all been ascertained. On the contrary, I 

 believe that the first step ought to be the establishment of a 

 distinct Water Department, which should at once address itself 

 to the remedying of the evils which are found to be most press- 

 ing. The time has long since arrived when the present neglected 

 state of many of our most important streams should be dealt 

 with, and that this was also the conviction of Parliament and 

 of the government is evident, from the appointment of such an 

 influential Committee as that presided over by the Duke of 

 Richmond last session. 



A new department should be' created — one not only endowed 

 with powers analagous to those of the Local Government Board, 

 but charged with the duty of collecting and digesting for use all 

 the facts and knowledge necessary for a due comprehension and 

 satisfactory dealing with every river, basin, or watershed area 

 in the United Kingdom — a department which should be presided 

 over, if not by a Cabinet Minister, at all events by a member of 

 the government who can be appealed to in Parliament. 



The department should have entire charge of, and control 

 over, all estuaries and navigable channels, both because these 

 are used by foreign vessels, and therefore the responsibilities 

 , attaching to their preservation are international, and because 

 they must be protected from hostile attack, and on these accounts 

 are essentially imperial property. For the same reason the cost 

 of amending and maintaining them should be defrayed out of 

 the imperial exchequer. 



As regards the regulation of the remainder of the watershed 

 area, the conclusions arrived at in the Report of the Duke of 

 Richmond's Select Committee seem to me entirely satisfactory. 

 I cannot do better than give a few extracts from that Report. 

 The Committee say — " "fliat in order to secure uniformity and 

 completeness of action each catchment area should, as a general 

 rule, be placed under a single body of conservators, who 

 should be responsible for maintaining the river from its source to 

 its outfall in an efficient state. With regard, however, to tri- 

 butary streams, the care of these might be entrusted to district 

 committees acting under the general direction of the conser- 

 vators, but near the point of junction with the principal stream 

 they should be under the direct management of the conservators 

 of the main channel, who should be a representative body con- 

 stituted of residents and owners of property within the whole 

 area of the watershed. The Committee go on to say that 

 "means should be taken to ensure the appointment of a conser- 

 vancy board for each watershed area," but that application 

 should first be made by persons interested in the district, and 

 that then the departmental authorities should send inspectors to 

 make local inquiries and to report upon the " necessities and 

 capacities of the district, and suggest the area and proportions 

 of taxation." 



With regard to what is probably the most important point of 

 all, the finding of the money necessary to carry out these recom- 

 mendations, the Committee advocate the introduction of a new 

 principle of taxation, the soundness of which cannot be ques- 

 tioned. Instead of the principle first introduced by the statute 



of Henry the Eighth, and observed ever since, of levying taxes 

 in proportion to the direct benefit conferred, the Committee 

 propose that the rates should be distributed over the whole area 

 of a watershed, including not only the lands, but the towns and 

 houses and all other property situate within that area. This is 

 in fact no more than a general application of the law of high- 

 ways, which in the time of the Romans, according to Justinian, 

 applied equally to waterways. It is perfectly just that every 

 acre, the drainage of which contributes to the flow of the 

 streams and rivers of every watershed area, should, in some 

 proportion or other, contribute also to the cost of maintaining 

 the channels of those streams and rivers in an efficient state. 

 The incidence of the taxation must of course, as has been 

 pointed out, be determined by the circumstances of each par- 

 ticular case, but there is no doubt that the conclusion of the 

 Duke of Richmond's Committee, that "the taxation should be 

 levied on the basis of rateable value," is the only sound, and at 

 the same time practical, way of dealing with this difficulty. 



The word "taxation" is not, I fear, generally connected with 

 any idea of profit to the individual taxpayer. But in this case, 

 as I hope in the course of this address I have made clear, the 

 prevention of large present losses, and the advantages gained by 

 an improved system, will give not only a fair but an ample 

 return on the capital expended. 



It is my firm belief that an intelligent management of water- 

 shed areas would be compatible with an absolute profit to every 

 interest affected ; that we have here no question of give and 

 take, but that in this, as in every other case, the laws of nature, 

 under proper and scientific regulation, can be made subservient 

 to the needs of the highest civilisation. 



THE PHONOGRAPH AND VOWEL SOUNDS'^ 



III. 



YXTE jiow pass to the general conclusions which may be drawn 

 ' from our experiments. In the first place it seems clear 

 that vowels do not depend on pitch alone or on the simple 

 grouping of partial tones independently of absolute pitch. Be- 

 fore the constituents of a vowel can be assigned, the pitch of the 

 prime must be named. But on the other hand the pitch of the 

 most prominent partial of the group is not alone sufficient to 

 allow us to name the vowel in which it appears ; to do this we 

 also require to be told the relation of the constituent partials to 

 one another. 



The sound U consists mainly 'of one tone generally lying in 

 the region above a. 



The sound o requires at least two partials ; when there are 

 only two important ones these lie in the region between g and /", 

 a region covering nearly two octaves. Indeed the upper limit 

 may extend above / " with a tenor or woman's voice. Other 

 partials than the prime are reinforced by the mouth-cavity over 

 all this region. This great range is obviously a distinguishing 

 mark of as compared with il, perhaps the distinguishing mark ; 

 for when il and are sung at various pitches, the most prominent 

 partial, first of one letter and then of the other, is highest, and 

 the most prominent partial of both sounds may lie on b'^, the 

 characteristic tone of 0. An u sung on D^ may even have_ the 

 tone b'^ more strongly present in it than an of the same pitch. 

 When il was sung by voice i on b^ the prominent partial was the 

 second ; when o was sung at the same pitch by the same voice,, 

 the second partial was still the most prominent. Thus for 

 voice I the chief distinction between il and on this note lay not 

 in the pitch of strongest reinforcement, but in the fact that the 

 prime was larger for than for u. When voice 5 sang « on 

 ^ the prominent partial was the prime ; when it sang the pro- 

 minent partial was the second, the prime being also strong. 

 Thus, for voice I, the distinction lay in the fact that the prime 

 was much smaller for than for ft. It is obvious here 

 that the ear cannot have been guided by the absolute pitch of 

 the reinforcement to the distinction between o and fi. At this 

 pitch the distinction lies in the fact that o contains two strong 

 partials (the prime and second), whereas u contains only one 

 (the prime or the second). The argument is not weakened by 

 saying that the il of one voice was not the same as the t'l of the 

 other. Identically the same it cannot have been ; nevertheless^ 

 on higher or lower notes the two voices agreed as to the com- 

 position of fi, and generically the vowels were certainly the 



' Continued from p. 397» 



