530 EEroiiT— 1897. 



is a curious approacli to it. While it is not by any means accui'ate, you 

 can distinguish tone of low pitch — very low tones — by a feeling of ' inter- 

 mission.' Experimenting in this way, you may stimulate by interrupting 

 this circuit at the rate of 30 or 40 or 50 breaks per second, and yet the 

 skin will tell you the individual breaks ; but when you get above that 

 number you lose the consciousness of the individual breaks, and you have 

 a more or less continuous sensation. The phonograph does not necessarily 

 give you 50 or 60 stimuli to produce a sensation of a tone ; you do not 

 require that number. I found that 8 or 10 per second may give you the 

 sensation for a tone of any pitch. In the same way, you may be able to 

 notice a slight difference up to perhaps 50 or 60, but above that the sen- 

 sation seems continuous. It is not the number of stimuli that determines 

 pitch, but the rate at which the stimuli affect the sense organ, whether it 

 be ear or skin. Then the question arises, What is it in the skin that is 

 irritated 1 It is not the corpuscles. They have to do with pressure. 

 There is no oi'gan, so far as we know, for the sense of temjaeratui'e. You 

 may say that the feeling is muscular. Possibly it may be so ; but the 

 effect is most marked when the current is so weak as to make it unlikely 

 that it passes so deep as to reach the muscles. 



(5) Mode of Communication tvith the Deaf. — This experiment suggests 

 the possibility of being able to communicate to those who are stone-deaf 

 the feeling, or at all events the rhythm, of music. It is not music, of 

 course, but, if you like to call it so, it is music on one plane and without 

 colour. There is no appreciation of pitch, or colour, or of quality, and 

 there is no effort at analysis, an effort which, I believe, has a great deal to 

 do with the pleasurable sensation we derive from music. In this experi- 

 ment you have the rhythm which enters largely into musical feeling. On 

 Saturday last, through the kindness of Dr. J. Kerr Love, I had the 

 opportunity of experimenting with four patients from the Deaf and Dumb 

 Institution, one of whom had her hearing up till she was eleven years of 

 age, and then she became stone-deaf. This girl had undoubtedly a recol- 

 lection of music, although she does not now hear any sound. She wrote me 

 a letter, in which she declared that what she felt was music, and that it 

 awakened in her mind a conscious something that recalled what music 

 was. The others had no conception of music, but they were able to 

 appreciate the rhythm, and it was interesting to notice how they all, 

 without exception, caught up the rhythm, and bobbed their heads up and 

 down, keeping time with the electrical thrills in their finger-tips. 



3. Specimens of the curves may be seen in two plates appended to the 

 Science Lecture of the Philosophical Society above referred to. 



4. As the research will in future be prosecuted with the aid of a grant 

 from the Government Grant Fund of the Royal Society, the Committee 

 does not desire to be reappointed. 



