490 



NA TURE 



[October 2 i, 1Q09 



ing in pitch may affect the ear in a second of time. 

 From ten to twenty vibrations, falling on the ear at 

 a certain rate, are sufficient to arouse the sense of 

 pitch of a tone of that frequency. It would seem that 

 with notes of low pitch, within limits, fewer vibrations 

 are required to enable the ear to appreciate pitch, and 

 the opposite holds good with notes of high pitch. This 

 corresponds with the fact that differences of pitch are 

 difficult to detect both in the upper and the lower 

 limits of the scale of audibility, whereas a skilled ear 

 in the middle ranges of the scale can appreciate a 

 difference of one sixty-fourth of a semitone. The ' 

 tracings also indicate approximately the pitch of any 

 note registered. Suppose three small waves corre- 

 spond to the wave of the one-hundredth of a second, 

 then the pitch of the note will be about three hundred 

 [jer second, or (taking the middle c at 256) a little \ 

 below /. The highest pitch I have mentioned is g" , or 

 more than 1500 vibs. per second, in the " Bell Song," 

 Lakm(5 (Delebes), by Madame Tetrazzini. 1 have 

 also observed that the tracings show intervals in which 

 there is a straight line, with no vibrations. If those 

 intervals are very short, then the interval may not be 

 appreciated by the ear, even with the most careful 

 attention. In all the tracings the wave form is com- 

 pound, not onlv owing to the existence of overtones, 

 but also because the voice is usually accompanied by 

 an instrument, the piano, or an orchestra. I took one 



VEAT IN NORTH AMERICA. 



FOR many years peat was looked on as a source 

 of fuel in poor countries only, where communi- 

 cations were undeveloped, and where cottagers ex- 

 tracted it by their personal labour for use in their own 

 household fires. To this day, the economist will 

 probably find that this is the best and most practical 

 treatment of a peat-bog. It becomes idle in such 

 cases to speak of relative calorific values, and to 

 point out that, even under present conditions of trans- 

 port, coal would form a more effective fuel. Where 

 the right of digging peat over a certain area is 

 included in the rent of a small holding, this peat is 

 dug at odd but suitable times, when the crofter or his 

 family might otherwise have remained idle. The cost 

 of labour thus becomes insignificant, especially where 

 creels are used for transport ; and e\-en the horse or 

 ass must be fed, whether or no he is engaged in 

 drawing the red cart along the ridges between cut- 

 away boglands, or down the grooved hillside from the 

 high-level deposit on the plateau. 



But from time to time capitalists have turned 

 longing eyes towards these stores of carbonaceous 

 matter, and have sought to get rid of the So or 90' 

 per cent, of water in the peat, and to produce a fuel 

 economically capable of transport. Others have pro- 

 posed to produce gas at the bog itself ; while others, 



Fig. 5. — Small purliun of a tracing Iroin the record of ibe overture to Tannhduscr played by the band of the Coldstream Guards. Time relations, 

 8;c., as in Fig. 2. Observe the variations in pitch as indicated by the number of waves in a short period, and the irregularity in form of the waves. 



tracing of voice-tones (a bass voice) with no accom- 

 paniment. 



The most complex waves are those produced by the 

 blending of many voices or by an orchestra (see Figs. 

 3 and 5). Here again there arises a curious considera- 

 tion. Suppose that in an orchestral piece all the 

 instruments do not attack at the same instant, or if 

 one lingers after the rest the fraction of a second, 

 in both cases the wave form and the tracing picture 

 in general will be affected. If the want of coincidence 

 passes beyond a limit, which it is difficult to define, 

 a musical ear finds the result defective, although one 

 can scarcely tell why. Nothing has excited more in 

 my mind a feeling of wonder at the powers of the 

 ear than the inspection of these tracings. Is there a 

 damping mechanism, or is a damping mechanism 

 necessary? May it not be, after all, that our per- 

 ceptions of musical tones, as in a musical composition, 

 are the result of different modes of stimulating the 

 ends of the cochlear nerves? May not innumerable 

 varieties of pressures act on the nerve-endings, possibly 

 as a whole, and send corresponding impulses to the 

 brain? I confess that in the face of these tracings 

 I find it more difficult to realise an analysis in the 

 cochlea ; but if not there, where does it take place ? 

 That there is an analysis when we make an effort of 

 attention there can be no doubt.' 



Joiix G. McKendrick. 



1 I have to thank Prof. Noel Paton, of Glasgow, and Prof. MacWilliam, 

 of Aberdeen, for the loan of some portions of the apparatus. 



NO. 2CS6, VOL. 81] 



often with marked success, have manufactured moss- 

 litter for use as an absorbent bedding for city stables 

 and dairy barns. 



I The various uses of peat have now attracted atten- 



! tion even on the North .'American continent. Messrs. 



I E. S. Bastin and C. A. Davis have provided an intro- 

 ducton,' manual on the subject in their description of 



j '■ The Peat Deposits of Maine " (Bulletin No. 376 of 

 the United States Geological Survey, igoq, pp. 12S). 

 They acknowledge that they have been preceded by 

 Mr. Erik Nystrom's treatise on " Peat and Lignite : 

 their Manufacture in Europe," issued a year previously 

 by the Canadian Department of Mines. Messrs. 



i Nystrom and .'\nrep have now also published the 

 results of their " Investigation of the Peat Bogs and 

 Peat Industry of Canada, during the Season 1908-9 " 

 (Bulletin No. i. Department of Mines, Canada, igog, 



The deposits in Maine are at present so little utilised 

 that Messrs. Bastin and Davis direct attention to the 

 various ways in which peat has become profitable 

 elsewhere, and, we must admit, to the various ways 

 in which it has been worked without profit to anyone 

 except the makers of machinery. The buildings and 

 heaps of scrap-iron lying derelict beside the bogs of 

 Europe have not yet served to warn those who are 

 fascinated by some fancy process, put before them 

 under seductive influences in the glamour of a weli-lit 

 exhibition. The authors of the United States bulletin 

 have no false enthusiasms, and they lay proper stress 



