May 7, 1885 | 
NATURE g 
which scientific biologists have shown to be true much 
more generally. All objects exposed to the air and passed 
from hand to hand are apt to have minute organisms 
settling upon them, and we should expect such things 
as bank-notes, which pass through many hands, to be 
favoured by more than their usual share of “germs,” 
knowing that simple abrasion is no satisfactory means for 
removing such minute bodies. Nevertheless it is interest- 
ing to see what really have been found on European bank- 
notes. M. Reinsch some time ago undertook to examine 
the money in circulation, with the result that two very small 
algze, which were named as species of Chvoococcus and 
Pleurococcus respectively, proved to be not uncommon on 
coins. M. Jules Schaarschmidt has since undertaken 
to examine the paper currency of various States, with 
the result that such living organisms and other objects as 
those in the annexed woodcut were discovered. Accord- 
ing to the statements to hand, the notes examined were 
particularly those of Austro-Hungary and Russia, and 
new as well as old ones furnished “an abundant crypto- 
gamic vegetation,” as well as “microbes,” and objects 
such as grains of starch, particles of hair, &c. 
The entire list comprises Bacterium ternmto, the common 
bacterium of putrefaction ; Saccharomyces cerevisi@, the 
SY AX h 
oe 
Fic. 2.—a@ and 7, minute alge; 4, yeast cells; c, Leftoiivia; d, starch- 
granules; e, g, 4, various Schizomzycetes ; fand 7, fibres. 
yeast plant ; various species of A@icrococcus, Leptothrix, 
and Lacil/us, as well as the two minute green alge de- 
scribed by Reinsch. 
We presume, in the absence of definite statements, that 
the groups of organisms sketched in Fig. 2 were obtained 
at different times, and on different notes ; otherwise the 
“flora” is indeed a rich and abundant one, and may 
probably have been an isolated one, to allow the species 
of Saccharomyces to form such a fine growth. 
There is obviously a very serious side to all this, how- 
ever, if further researches prove that, as appears possible, 
our most minute and dreaded enemies are always in our 
midst on such apparently welcome visitants as coin and 
bank-notes ;: money will have earned a worse name even 
than it has heretofore! £m vevanche, there are two 
points which no doubt will be insisted on: in the first 
place, the observers named have not, so far, described 
any organism on the money investigated which is known 
to be inimical to us ; and secondly, precautions have been 
taken from time immemorial against the transmission of 
currency passing from a plague-stricken community to a 
healthy one. Possibly the facts derived from these ob- 
servations will be made use of to bring more forcibly 
before the minds of our less careful brethren the dangers 
of handling “filthy lucre” in times of disease. 
STANDARD PITCH? 
M SORET raises the question of musical pitch, and 
. advocates A 432, long ago proposed by M. 
Meerens, of Belgium. It is rather curious that in Bel- 
gium itself M. Meerens’s proposal was considered and 
rejected by a Commission appointed in 1877, upon whose 
report the French pitch A 435 was adopted by Royal 
decree on March 19 of this year. There seems to be 
very little difference between the two; it amounts, in 
fact, to exactly 12 cents or hundredths of an equal semitone, 
of which 213 make acomma. Hence there is no practical 
reason for making the change as affecting singers. But 
no instruments made for A 435 would be available for 
A 432, so that the advantage of uniformity would be lost, 
without any advantage to the voice or the quality of in- 
struments. The arguments in its favour are almost 
entirely arithmetical. To begin with the inaudible 1 
vibration and proceed by exact doubling to 64 is an arith- 
metical dream. It is true that Konig, by a most ingenious 
adaptation of a large tuning-fork acting in place of a 
pendulum to a clock going in a room at 20° C. (for about 
five days in a year), has succeeded in making a fork of 
that precise number of vibrations at that precise tempera- 
ture. But at 15° C., the temperature adopted for the French 
diapason normal (standard fork), the pitch of this would 
not be 64, but, to take Ko6nig’s numbers, 64'036. The 
charm of the arithmetic vanishes, therefore, with a slight 
alteration of temperature, and the pitch has become fully 
1 cent (hundredth of a semitone) sharper. Granted that 
this is an imperceptible amount, yet it is enough to alter 
the whole of the arithmetic. Then the arithmetic is itself 
founded on just intonation, which is not adopted any- 
where. If we take the equal temperament, now generally 
accepted, we should get for A 432 the values C 256°9, 
Cf 272'2, D 288-3, D¥ 305'5, E 3236, F 342°9, FB 363°3, 
G 384°9, G# 4078, A 432, A$ 457°7, B 473'9, C 513'8. 
There is nothing charming here. M. Soret, in his table, 
quietly ignores the chromatic notes and the equal tem- 
perament. If, however, we took C 256 as the starting- 
point, the A of C major in just intonation would not be 
432, but, as he owns, a comma flatter, 426°67. He bases 
everything physically on the violin, which is tuned in D 
and not in C, or the viola and violoncello, which are both 
tuned in G, not in C, and hence even for these instruments, 
with the great assumption of just intonation, his use of the 
major scale of C is incorrect.2 The reasons that are to 
guide us in the choice of a pitch must certainly not be 
arithmetical. For more than two centuries up to 1813, 
when the Philharmonic Society was founded, all Europe 
used a pitch within a comma either way of Handel’s fork 
A 4225. Then, owing to the presentation of new instru- 
ments by the Emperor of Russia to a Vienna regiment at 
the Congress of Vienna, pitch rose gradually but slowly. 
In 1826 our Philharmonic Society, under Sir G. Smart, 
adopted A 433, between M. Soret’s and French pitch, 
and this was known for many years in London as the 
Philharmonic pitch. France adopted A 435 in 1859. 
Under Costa our pitch rose to its present height, A 454’7. 
But our army pitch, used at Kneller Hall, and adopted 
for the forthcoming Exhibition, is A 452. Now, the trouble 
is that our classical composers wrote their music for 
Handel’s pitch, while since 1860 Continental composers 
t J.-L. Soret, ‘‘Sur le Diapason” (Archives des Sciences physiques et 
naturelles. January, 1885. Geneya) 
2 Savart, whom M. Soret quotes, was in error with regard to the pitch of 
the resonance of Cremona violins. It was not 256 vibrations. A series of 
instruments examined by Mr. A. J. Ellis in 1880 gave about 270 as the 
primary maximum, and 252 as the secondary. But the main character was 
the great uniformity of reinforcement for different pitches.—See his ‘‘ History 
of Musical Pitch.” 
