January 12, 1905] 



NA TURE 



251 



we can interpret the groups of marks made on the wax 

 •cylinder of the phonograph. Each group corresponds 

 •to a " shoclv " from the cords, and the smaller curves 

 making up the group are due to the movements of the 

 air in the resonators. Prof. Scripture is not satisfied 

 with the theory of Helmholtz that the resonators de- 

 velop overtones in a harmonic series, nor with that 

 •of Hermann, who asserts that the resonance tones need 

 ■not necessarily be harmonic. He states that he can- 

 .not interpret his tracings by the rigid application of 

 ■either of these theories, and he lays stress on the fact 

 that the walls of the resonating cavities above the 

 cords are not rigid like the resonators of musical 

 instruments, but are soft, as if the wall were,, fluid. 

 'Such a resonator, he says, will give its own tone in 

 response to all tones. We confess that here we are 

 not able fully to comprehend the author's meaning. 



Prof. Scripture endeavours also to establisli a close 

 relationship between the form of the vibration of the 

 cords and the action of the resonators. According to 

 him, the form of the vibration of the cord may be 

 altered bv changes in the action of the muscular fibres 

 that tighten the cord, so as to produce a tone of a given 



— v.y ~V^-»'^/\/W\/\/\aA\/\/^ 



1 Winkle's Toast, 

 Joseph Jefferson. 



pitch, .\ssuming that each muscle fibre has a separate 

 nerve fibre (which is highly improbable), one can see 

 that the tension of the cords, even when adapted to the 

 production of a tone of a given pitch, might be so 

 modified as to give out a tone-wave of a special form, 

 and that thus an almost infinite variety of qualities of 

 tone (tone-colours) might be produced. The special 

 •quality of tone would thus in the first instance depend 

 on the psychical condition of the individual at the 

 moment. In the next place, according to Prof. 

 Scripture, the " water-wall " resonators, as he calls 

 them, will develop their own tones, independently of 

 the cord-tones, and thus, again, by a summation of 

 these tones, the quality of the vowel-tone may be 

 almost infinitely varied. In this way there is a 

 physiological association between the movements of 

 the cords and the action of the resonators. 



Prof. Scripture also notes that each vowel has its 

 own harmony, depending on the resonators, and that 

 if it is sounded for even a short time its " melody " 

 may change. This is why it is that when we examine 

 the waves corresponding to a vowel as transcribed 

 from the gramophone they are often seen to change in 

 character as we approach the end of the series of 



NO. 1837, VOL. 71] 



waves. The writer can corroborate this view from his 

 observations by his own method of recording directly 

 the vibrations of a phonograph recorder on a rapidly 

 moving glass plate. 



Prof. Scripture also points out a fact that was soon 

 apparent to all observers in experimental phonetics, 

 namely, that in the records of the phonograph or 

 gramophone there are neither syllables nor inter- 

 mediate glides, but a succession of waves, infinitely 

 diverse in form, corresponding to the tones of the voice 

 or the sounds of any musical instrument. The sound 

 of a single vowel may be in a groove a metre long on 

 the wax cylinder of the phonograph, and in the bottom 

 of this groove there may be thousands of little groups 

 of waves. The writer possesses records of songs that 

 if drawn out would be loo metres in length. Finally, 

 Prof. Scripture lays emphasis on the effect of varying 

 intensity as influencing quality. Apart from the 

 theory of vowel-tones advanced by the author, this 

 interesting lecture owes its value to the way in which 

 Prof. Scripture approaches the problem from the 

 physiological and psychological side. The mode of 

 production of vowel-tones is in this sense not entirely 

 a physical problem. We are dealing with living cords 

 moved by living muscles, and with curiously shaped 

 resonators having living walls. 



John G. McKendrick. 



GEOLOGY OF SPITL' 



THERE are spots, insignificant in themselves, 

 which have a world-wide celebrity among those 

 interested in certain pursuits or investigations. Such 

 is Gheel to the alienist, Shide to the seismologist, or 

 Bayreuth to the musician, and such, too, is Spiti, a 

 barren and sparsely inhabited valley in the centre of 

 the Himalayas, which has long been known to geo- 

 logists for its extensive series of richly fossiliferous 

 rocks. A district like this could not long escape the 

 notice of the Geological Survey of India, and one of 

 the earliest volumes of its memoirs is that by Dr. F. 

 Stoliczka and F. R. Mallet. Published in 1864, this 

 remained the standard, and practically the only, de- 

 scription of the geology of Spiti until the publication, 

 in 1891, of Mr. C. L. Griesbach's memoir, in which, 

 while adopting his predecessors' mapping in the main, 

 he introduced great modifications in the sequence. 

 Neither of these descriptions, however, is entitled to 

 rank as more than a reconnaissance, but now we have 

 the results of what may fairly be described as a survey 

 of this region, and, in an interesting and clearly ex- 

 pressed memoir, Mr. Hayden has gone far towards 

 clearing up the points which were in dispute. In all 

 cases where he has found himself at variance with 

 his predecessors' conclusions he has produced good 

 evidence, and it is in one way satisfactory that he is 

 generally in agreement with tlie one who can no longer 

 defend his views. 



The Spiti valley contains representatives of every 

 series from Cretaceous to Silurian, and a Cambrian 

 age is inferred for a series of sedimentary, but un- 

 fossiliferous, beds underlying the latter. In all these 

 Mr. Hayden not only collected from known, but also 

 discovered several previouslv unknown, fossil-horizons, 

 among the most interesting of which we may mention 

 that of the land plants of Culm age. In the Silurian 

 he has restored Stoliczka's correlation and fully sup- 

 ported it by fossil evidence; on the other hand he has 

 confirmed Mr. Griesbach's discovery of Lower Triassic 

 beds, and his conclusion that there is, in Spiti, a con- 

 tinuous conformable sequence from Permian to Upper 

 Trias, and in this connection has rendered ample 



1 "TheGenlogvof Spiti. "i'hPa"sofBashaluandRupshu." ByH. H. 

 Hayden. {Memoirs of the Geological Surveyor India, vol. xxxvi , part 1.), 

 Pp. vi + 129 ; illu^lra'ed. (Calcutta : Government Printing Office, 1^04.) 



