THE SKIN AND HAIE. 79 



Nature, of which poets sang in days of yore while science 

 yet was not, have been confirmed by investigation and made 

 evident to understanding. Harmony can come through each 

 and every sense, though acoustic harmonies are, to common 

 appreciation, the most evident. In respect to these, study of 

 the science of acoustics has reduced them to order and cer- 

 tainty. Every physiologist knows, so does every musician, 

 that the most perfect of all harmonies is fundamental tone to 

 octave ; so perfect indeed, that one desiderated effect of har- 

 mony is almost lost, the two or more notes coalescing into 

 one integrate tone; all individuality departed, or rather 

 merged, the general effect being a mere intensification of 

 loudness. 



In respect to the acoustics of Nature, the voices of her 

 streamlets as they murmur past, or the sterner tone of her 

 more impetuous rivers, the seething plash of cataracts, and 

 the wild throb and intermittent bellowing of the mighty sea, 

 there is nothing inharmonious in all these tones. Swelling 

 together, they come to the ear of man impressed with no 

 quality to shock his acoustic sense. Thus also with the 

 breezy whisper through forest-leaves, or those wild voices 

 that the tempest wakes, even to heaven's artillery, the mighty 

 thunder. Thus too with the voices of birds. Songsters chirp 

 and warble nay, croak and crow yet all is harmonious. 

 Birds ay, think of it, doctors of music and learned maestri 

 and orchestral conductors, each and all whose duty it is to 

 solve the mysteries of acoustic art birds may sing all toge- 

 ther each a different song and in a different key, yet their 

 singing produces no discord. Much has been written of this, 

 but much is still unknown. Ingenious Daines Barrington 

 considered that the reason why birds can establish a Dutch 

 concert, each singing his own tune, each in a different key, is 

 because the timbre of bird-music is pitched so high as to lie 

 beyond the range of human acoustic let me say ' vision.' 



Then the harmonies of Nature's colouring, how beautiful 



