MODERN SCIENCE. 247 



means of the resonance-globe (improved by Konig's ap- 

 paratus), DECOMPOSING SOUND into its constituents, which 

 he verified by performing the reverse operation, reproducing 

 a given sound by combining the individual sounds of which 

 his resonators had shown that it was composed. By his 

 analytical and synthetical investigations into musical and 

 other sounds of the most varied kinds, he fully succeeded 

 in explaining the different qualities of these sounds, and 

 showed they are due to the various intensities of the har- 

 monics which accompany the primary tones of those sounds ; 

 so that he determined, so to speak, their sound-colour. It 

 is difficult to conceive an analysis more exhaustive. (See 

 his " Popular Scientific Lectures/' Longmans, 1873.) The 

 inner membrane of the ear cochlea is lined (as Corti has 

 shown) with about 3,000 minute fibres, all connected with 

 the acoustic nerve ; each of these is tuned for a particular 

 note as if it were a delicate resonator, and only vibrates 

 in unison with this note, being deaf for all others hence> 

 however complex external sounds may be, these microscopic 

 fibres can analyse and reveal the constituents of which the 

 sounds are formed. Helmholtz has also determined, after 

 numerous experiments on light, the power and limits of 

 microscopic vision, which is not less than one 8o,oooth 

 part of an inch in red light. Likewise, various other 

 branches of physics are indebted to him ; his investiga- 

 tions regarding heat, gravity, solar energy gave results 

 similar to those obtained by Sir William Thomson. Ac- 

 cording to these two great physicists, SOLAR ENERGY* is 

 due to the shrinkage by gravity of the mass of matter 

 constituting the sun, and the supply of heat by the sun 

 at the present rate would not probably obtain for more 

 than twenty millions of years from beginning to end. This 

 computation falls far short of that arrived at by geologists 

 and evolutionists, for the evidence upon which they base 

 their calculations, such as denudation, formation of new 

 strata, subsidence and uprising of continents, growth of coal- 



* The intrinsic lustre of the sun is nearly four times as great as that 

 of electric light, and 5,000 times that of molten metal in a Bessemer's 

 converter. 



