AEOLIAN INSTR UMENTS. 77 



deliberate means. The reasons for this superiority of tone, when a 

 string is broken up, may be understood when one considers that 

 any body, whether it is a plate, or a reed, or a string, or glass, when 

 broken up into segments, and so made to sound, gives an intense 

 harmonic tone. Each of those segments which compose that body 

 are of course vibrating, with smaller amplitudes than the whole 

 body would, if vibrating in the fundamental note. This is especially 

 desirable when the string has to encounter the resistance of wind, and 

 when the vibrator meets wind the great thing to aim at is that the 

 vibrations should be close and small. Therefore, the smaller the 

 motion you obtain for the vibrator, the more intense and clean the 

 tone will be. That was the reason why I always endeavoured to gain 

 the presence of the node to ensure this harmonic tone. Nothing 

 better could be desired than the tone when you got it, so long as time 

 was no object; but you had to wait for it, because there was this 

 resolving of the string, and it was also desirable that space should 

 be no object, because if you got a structure about 8 feet high, it was 

 a mild and convenient form of making a string organ. However, these 

 difficulties of space have now been overcome, and the largest note 

 required with a string corresponding to the 20 feet pipe of an organ is 

 contained in this small box. It is the section of the register of the 

 pedal stop of a string organ, and instead of the string being exposed, 

 and liable to be deranged, it is stowed away inside, the wind escaping 

 through a channel and pallet controlled by the ordinary harmonium 

 treatment. The string is in that little coil, only a foot long, and 

 instead of going out of tune, which it did when it depended on the 

 string, it now no longer depends on the elasticity of the string, but 

 upon a sort of bow or crook which is placed at the end, on which the 

 tension depends, so that the tension now depends on a spring, instead 

 of on the string. These improvements have only taken place during 

 the last few months ; for about this time last year, when I spoke at 

 the Royal Institution, matters were in such an unsatisfactory state 

 that I felt the only thing to do was to retire home, and never emerge 

 until something satisfactory was done. Mr. Hermann Smith came 

 with me, who entertained a singular theory on organ pipes and 

 their functions, which has received a very remarkable verification. 

 He regards an organ pipe as containing reciprocating action of two 



