\'< IVEMBER 7. I'll 8 



NATURE 



185 



:i) Advancing on the lines laid down l>\ Sir Charles 

 Hell and J- Muller, "that, howevei excite* 

 nerve ol special sens' to its own 



sensation" (Bayliss, " Fri General Physio- 



9*5i P- 5 , 3)i Helrnholtz put forward the hypo- 

 1 1 ■ • sis thai 1 ai '1 fibi e of 1 he auditory nervi 



Si n-s.i lion-, of Tone," 

 1885, pp. 14* .in.l 151) without regard, as ii 

 the imrrn > which ii musi nave foi 



. . 11 . fi om the rate ol damping 

 , "ii follow - that the natural 

 pitch "I thi internal vibrators, which respond sensibh 

 to a given simple sound, ranges over about a whole 

 lane" (Rayleigh, " Hieon of Sound," vol. ii., §389). 

 That means that when a note is sounded a great 

 number of nerve-fibres are stimulated, for the Helrn- 

 holtz mechanism of the internal eat requires ever; 

 kable pianof > : to bi connected 

 "with .1 nervous fibre in such a waj that this fibre 

 would bi a si nsation evei \ 



time the string vibrated" ip. 129). The number ol 

 internal vibrators allotted to the interval 

 of a whole tone varies. In [870 ii was 663; in 1S-7 

 it was too; bur the number, if more than one, is im- 

 material here. Assuming that too strings of the basilar 

 te vibrate in unison with the given note, 99 of 

 these will be executing forced vibrations at other than 

 their proper frequencies, and ex hypothesi 99 nerve- 

 fibres will call up 99 dissonant sensations of tone, all 

 of different pitch and of intensities diminishing 

 regularly on either side of a maximum, which is 

 due to the tooth fibre, the peculiar pitch of which 

 oh the exciting note. \- each nerve-fibre, 

 excited, gives rise to the sensation of its 

 own peculiar pitch, it matters not whether the internal 

 vibrators vibrate with their proper frequencies or with 

 that of the imposed tone. Unless, therefore, there 

 is in the central organ some contrivance, which Heim- 

 lich/, does not provide, for inhibiting the odd 99 nerve- 

 a transformer of some kind to standardise 

 their pitch, it follows that when a tuning-fork is 

 made to vibrate, no note can be heard, but only an 

 unimaginable din. Music would then bi impossible; 

 we could never hear anything but noise. 



On the other hand, if Helrnholtz had allowed each 



nerve-fibre to communicate the actual pitch of the 



vibrator connected with it, whether executing a free 



or a forced vibration, then then could never be a 



clean-cut, staccato ending to a note, but after a bass 



note has II to the ear there would 



or about one-tenth of a second, according to 



his 1 -timate — to the ear an appreciable period of time 



a similar confused noise of manv mistuned strings; 



for, bv p. 144, ".'in elastic bod) set into sympathetic 



vibration by any tone vibrates sympathetically in the 



pitch number of the exciting tone; but as soon as 



eases, it goes on sounding in the 



pitch number of its own pi The cochlea 



. Schnecke) well deserves its name. For, 



many fibres its house may hold, the snail 



certainly has two horns. Sir Thomas Wrightson's 



theory presents us with no such dilemma as this. 



(2) In 1 1 , i r', I found that if 1 sing to a bass note 

 such a vowel as oh or 00. and end the note staccato 

 bv closing the glottis (the "Glasgow" substitute in 

 speech for occlusive I or k) while keeping the shape 

 of the mouth unaltered, 1 hear tint the harmonic of 

 the voice which is reinforced bv thai excellent resona- 

 tor, the cavitv of the mouth, is still audible for a very 

 brief space after the voici has ceased to be heard. From 

 which 1 infer that the rate of damping in the internal 

 ear is more rapid than that of the booS of air in the 

 mouth shaped for certain vowels. Hot .1- I do not 

 expect or desire that this inference should be accepted 



NO. 2558, VOL. I02] 



as scientific fact merel) on my statement, just as 

 little am I disposed to accept Helmholtz's guess- 

 work as an adequate basis for the calculation which 

 was 1. 1 far-reaching and subversive con- 



sequences, overthrowing, for example, the belief of 

 Lagrange .mi\ Thomas Young thai rapid beats may 

 combine into a sensation of tone. Hence my previous 

 letter (Nature, Maj 16, [918) with a kymograph 

 tracing of the word "utter" intoned at pitch too and 

 measured by a tuning-fork of the same pitch. In 

 that tracing it is not a question of a note being 

 reduced 10 one-tenth of its intensity in the time occu- 

 pied by 9-5 vibrations, but well within that limit a 

 loud note is reduced to silence. There is the proi I 

 that the unchecked estimate which is the verv key- 

 stone of the Helrnholtz theory of audition is wide of 

 the mark. 



The complete cessation of sound in "utter" is an 

 essential feature of English and of other languages. 

 It is astonishing that Ellis, the phonetician, never 

 thought of this when translating Helrnholtz. That 

 which is cpmmon to the first p, t, or :k in "stop, 

 please," "or not to be," " bookcase," bv virtue of which 

 these three "sounds" are classed together as voice- 

 less occlusives, is evidently a shock sensation of the 

 sudden cessation of a sound. How the existence of 

 such a sensation is to be reconciled with any reson- 

 ance theory of audition has long been a puzzle to 

 me. The very term resonance seems out of place in 

 the presence of this phenomenon; and when, on 

 May 17, Sir Thomas Wrightson's book came into my 

 hands, the expression "dead beat" in his preface 

 appeared to promise an advance towards the solution 

 of a most complicated problem. W. Prrrf.tt. 



University College, London, October 23. 



The Society of Civil Servants. 

 Apropos of the letter which appeared in Nature 

 of October 24 on the need for scientific workers to 

 organise themselves, I shall be obliged if yoo will 

 allow me through your columns to direct the atten- 

 tion of scientific workers in the Government service 

 to the recently founded body, the Society of Civil 

 Servants, which is intended to cover the middle and 

 upper grades of the Service — grades which hitherto 

 have been almost wholly unorganised. By its second 

 rule the objects of the society are defined as "to deal 



with all matters affecting the Civil Service, and to 

 take such action thereon as may lie expedient" — a 

 purview of unlimited range. While the society is 

 constituted on the basis of individual membership, 

 members are encouraged to coalesce into whatever 

 sectional associations — called in the rules "grade 

 groups" — may conveniently and naturally come 



al 1. It is these "grade groups" that will consider 



matters such as salaries and scales of promotion 

 which affect their members solely, the society taking 

 up only wide questions affecting the Civil Service 

 ally. 

 It is an old saving that " Providence helps those 

 who help themselves." Scientific workers have in 

 tin past had just cause to complain of the niggardly 

 treatment that they have experienced at the hands 

 of the State. Bv organising themselves into "grade 

 groups" of the society, according to the various 

 Departments, those in the State employ will have an 

 opportunity of directing attention to their claim for 

 more generous treatment; but should they fail to 

 tale advantage of the present opportunity, they will 

 have no one to blame but themselves if in the future 

 the) continue to receive the same neglect as in the 

 past. Ii is no secret that a scheme for the applica- 

 tion of the principles of the Whitley report to the 



