Oct. 15, 1874 1 



NATURE 



Iluyghens, that the following is sent you for publication in the 



old conservated form :— 



A8C'DE''-!F^GIin''L^M-'N=0«r 

 R4S5i-,4u6v2WXV^ West 



"Manufactured Articles" 



There are precedents to justify a hope that it would be no ex- 

 cursion beyond the province of Nature, if somebody who knows 

 that molecules possess the essential character of a manufactured 

 article were kindly to explain how he knows a manufactured 

 article when he sees it, in his mind's eye or elsewhere. 



The answer used to be "contrivance, design ; an end, a pur- 

 pose ; means for the end, adaptation to the purpose." This, it 

 was said, we find in a watch ; " we perceive that its several parts 

 are framed and put together for a purpose." The same thing, it 

 was lurther said, we find still more in the works of nature, " and 

 that in a degree which exceeds all computation." And why so 

 much more? Because " tlie contrivances of nature surpass the 

 contrivances of art, in the complexity, subtlety, and curiosity of 

 the mechanism ; and still more, if possible, do they go beyond 

 them in number and variety." This was the old answer: the 

 new one is contained in such phrases as these : " exact equality," 

 "exact unison," "exactly the same magnitude," "constants not 

 approximately but absolutely identical." 



Here it is hard not to stop and ask wliat can possibly prove 

 that these things are absolutely so : or what can possibly contri- 

 bute the smallest probability to a hypothesis that anything is 

 absolutely anything, I do not say among the laws of nature, but 

 among its collocations. Very likely it might be proved that the 

 mean-square variation in the value of one of the above-mentioned 

 constants is a prodigiously smaller fraction of its mean value than 

 any other fraction which the molecular theory has occasion to 

 take account of; and anyhow the fact remains that a molecule 

 of bismuth, for instance, differs from a molecule of lead immensely 

 more than two molecules of eitlier can differ from one another. 

 Perhaps this will do as well for the argument ; if so, there is no 

 excuse for the absolute ; and whether or no, the argument will 

 be the better for explanation, or perhaps it will be the worse for 

 the argument. 



However this may be, the difference between 'the old answer 

 and the new one is rather instructive. An eager disputant might 

 say the new one was contradictory of the old one ; but it is safer 

 to say that the new is at best independent of the old. Clearly a 

 watch is about the last thing which would be cited to illustrate 

 the new sort of manufactured article. The examples which our 

 authors do by preference cite are coins, weights, and measures ; 

 and certainly it would be difficult to name manufact;:red articles 

 which should better exemplify uniformity for the sake of uni- 

 formity. And for a very good reason (that is the worst of it) ; 

 because the purposes of coins, weiglits, and measures aj'e 

 defeated, they who handle them deceived, and (as our 

 authors are careful to say) they who manufacture them 

 deceivers, so far as the things are not uniform. So the infer- 

 ence Irom such things only comes to this, that uniformity is 

 a character of manufactured articles when uniformity is part of 

 the purpose of manufacture. Is then the new argument, after 

 all, a special case of the old one ? Not so : for when men pro- 

 duce as a novelty a special case of an old argument, this must 

 be because it is an especially strong case of the same ; but we 

 have seen th.at the old argument owes much of it;i virtue to com- 

 plexity and variety ; therefore, our modem manufactured articles, 

 which are above all things simple and uniform, will only furnish 

 a special case of the oUl argument by furnishing an especially 

 weak one. Design, in short, has nothing to do with the new 

 argument, and we must look for analogies among manufactured 

 articles which are uniform, not because uniformity adapts them 

 to their purpose, but simply because they ate manufactured 

 articles. 



Tlie nearest approach I can think of is to be found on a scale 

 almost molecu'ar, for number and sometimes for magnitude, in 

 a London wilderness of similar and similarly situited houses. It 

 is oppressive to walk past these boxes so nearly identical in form, 

 and to think of the infinite variety of their contents ; to think 

 how different they would have been, and how much fitter for 

 their purposes, if their inhabitants could have secreted them as 

 a snail secretes his shell. Anil why does it make all the differ- 

 ence that they have been manufactured ? Why did not the 

 manufacturer vaiy them according to; the interests connected 

 with them? Of course because he did not care about those 



interests ; because he could not foresee them ; and because it 

 would not answer to try and provide for them. And now we 

 understand the sort of manufacturer the new argument reveals : 

 a manufacturer who does not care what becomes of his articles 

 the moment he gets them off hi* hands by his formulas beginning 

 to be interpretable ; a manufacturer who cannot solve his own 

 equations except in a grossly approximative fashion ; a manufac- 

 turer who could not give his constants the proper values if he 

 knew wliat values to give them. 



Uniformity, in short, is not as such the sign of a manufac- 

 tured article, except as it may be the sign of an imperfect 

 manufacturer. I do not suppose this is what the new argument 

 is meant to mean : but this, I submit, is what it does mean. 

 Perhaps, however, some competent supporter of it will kindly 

 explain it a little. C. J. Monro 



Yorkshire College of Science 



Will you permit a few words upon your allusion to this Col- 

 lege in a leading article of the Sth inst. ? 



If its promoters have confined their present efforts to the establish- 

 ment of a Faculty of Science, one cause has been that the amount of 

 their funds compelled a selection instead of a comprehension of 

 subjects. With a capital of 26,000/. they could not venture to 

 cover so large a field as Owens College commenced upon with 

 an invested endowment of four times the amount. But already, 

 before our doors are opened, we have cheering signs that in pro- 

 viding a function to which endowments may be entrusted, the 

 College will accrete to itself aid from widely-divergent quarters. 

 The Royal assent has been given to an amended scheme of the 

 Endowed Schools Commissioners for the Akroyd Charity, by 

 which an important annual residue is allotted to the College, with 

 representation upon the Trust. By the liberality of the Cloth- 

 workers' Company, the sum of 500/. per annum is set apart for 

 three years for a Professor of Textile Industries and for Scholar- 

 ships. Is it unreasonable to hope that new professorships will 

 be established by the generosity of private individuals ? The 

 existence here of a flourishing School of Medicine is favourable 

 to your views of massing the Faculties, and aheady a first link of 

 union is being forged between the two bodies in relation to the 

 classes in Chemistry. 



Do not suppose that the College adopts Pannus mihi panis as 

 its motto. A thoroughly practical community must run a risk 

 of magnifying the practice of science rather than its theory, but if 

 the selection of professors has been fortunate, there is no doubt 

 that;; udents will be taught practice through theory. Your 

 forcible remarks will doubtless strengthen the hands of certain 

 liberal donors to the College, who have offered increased sums 

 when an Arts Faculty can be established. 



Leeds, Oct. 12 R. Reynolds 



On the Process of Tone-making in Organ-pipes 



The natural order of harmonic progression in an open organ- 

 pipe is well known. That there is from the same pipe an inverse 

 order of harmonics equally natural is not equally well known. 

 There is no intimation that I am aware of, in any treatise on 

 sound, of this fact having been observed, and the absence of recog- 

 nition is no doubt attributable to a general disregard of the study 

 of the comparative acoustics of musical instruments. My inves- 

 tigations into the process of tone-making in organ-pipes and 

 other instruments have clearly shown me that there is an order 

 0/ trcinsUife harmonics distinct from tlie order of concomitant 

 harmonics or " over-tones." Wliy I call them " transitive" will 

 be apparent in the argument. Certain it is that our mimaphonic 

 power in organ-pipes and in other musical devices depends on 

 the command we can ensure over these two orders distinctively, 

 and also on their comparative influences on the tones produced. 

 In this manifestation of an inversion of harmonic progression, 

 the nature, and, without extravagance one may say, tlie individu- 

 ality, of the aeroplastic reed is most fully pronounced. Experi- 

 mental proof is easily obtained, and, whilst bringing into 

 prominence the peculiar display, will at the same time furnish 

 indubitable evidence of the formative power exercised by the 

 air-reed in the process of tone-making. 



By the term " tone-making " is to be understood the manner 

 of origination not merely of a note of defined pitch emitted by a 

 musical instrument, but also of all the constituent sounds which 

 give colour or quality to the note, and enter into the effect per- 

 ceived by the ear. The artist, according to his sagacity, seizes 



