AEOLIAN INSTRUMENTS. 79 



pure tone, and was sufficiently elastic to allow it to speak at once, and 

 afforded sympathetic resistance. Then, if you wished to change the 

 tone, how could it be done ? The next deviation was to flatten out 

 the two circles, and a further development was to bring them to 

 almost the shape of an almond. In passing from the simple circle 

 to that form, you pass through all varieties of tone from the flute to 

 the horn. The simple ring makes the simplest tone, and as you 

 depart from that more harmonics are allowed to be introduced, 

 because more play is allowed to the vibrator. If a rectangular figure 

 is adopted, it allows more freedom than the circle, and that gives the 

 tone of an open diapason pipe ; and when that is changed into a more 

 acute form, you get all the phases between the open diapason and the 

 trumpet. I will sound two or three of these notes just to show you 

 that there has been something absolutely accomplished, and that you 

 may hear two or three qualities of tone. I will not detain you longer, 

 but I have one thing further to say which is to show you what is the 

 upshot of all this. It is not merely that one means is substituted for 

 another. It does not concern a scientific body that there should now 

 be success in place of a forlorn hope ; but it means that that which 

 has very naturally encountered ridicule has come true : that the natural 

 division of a string being broken up, and made to sound by a reed, is 

 a means of affording a more intense and more pure tone, and a tone 

 is at once afforded by this natural coincidence better than any scale 

 could arrange ; and that a vibrator can receive from solid objects that 

 reinforcement which has hitherto been considered peculiar to columns 

 of air. When you once come to use solid surfaces, we know that a 

 square yard of vibrating surface can afford to any amount of notes an 

 equally good reinforcement. The whole object of these experiments 

 is to show that we may use solid bodies, instead of columns of air, in 

 re-acting upon a vibrator. This is the result which has been reached 

 so far. The greatest progress has been made during the last year, but ' 

 I think what I have said is enough to enable you to judge whether 

 that result is worth obtaining, and whether it has been honestly and 

 patiently worked for. * 



* In the interval between this lecture, and the lecture delivered at South Kensington 

 Aug 26th, so many improvements have been made, that this lecture is chiefly interesting as 

 indicating the stage of progress then attained. 



