434 Scientific Proceedings, Royal Bnhlln Sociefij. 



tinct octave. And a correspondent of Nature writes that, in 

 roaming over tlie hills and rooks near Kendal, which are composed 

 chiefly of limestone, he had often found what are called musical 

 stones. They are generally thin, flat, weather-beaten stones, of 

 different sizes and peculiar shapes, which, when struck, produce a 

 musical tone instead of the dull, heavy, leaden sound of an ordi- 

 nary stone. The sounds of these stones are very much alike ; but 

 sets of eight have been collected which produce a distinct octave. 

 The French scientific weekly, La Nature copied the communi- 

 cation from its English namesake, and brought forward an addi- 

 tional instance of the same phenomenon. It told of a performer 

 who played airs on rough flints suspended by silk threads, striking 

 them with an iron rod. And, to come nearer home, Ireland is not 

 without her singing stones. I hear there is a bridge, between 

 Ballina and BelmuUet, whose coping stones are particularly 

 sonorous. 



With regard to the set at present before us, there is, unfortu- 

 nately, very little information to be had. They were presented to 

 the Royal Dublin Society by Miss Hunt, of 10, Upper Merrion- 

 street, on 1st December, 1857 — more than twenty-seven years ago — 

 under the title of "A Set of Musical Stones from Cumberland." 



A set of probably similar stones, consisting of sixty pieces, 

 varying in length from six inches to four feet, and having 

 a compass of five octaves, was collected about thirteen years 

 ago in Cumberland by an artizan named Till, of Keswick.^ 

 This, like the set in the Science and Art Museum, is not a mere 

 musical curiosity, but an effective instrument which draws a 

 hall full of people whenever its inventor appears in public. He 

 would deserve such support, for the time occupied in com- 

 pleting the set was eleven years. I believe its range has since 

 been extended by some fifteen or twenty stones. Three perform 

 on it at the same time ; and the effect is as pleasing as it is 

 novel. At the late Amsterdam Exhibition, and elsewhere since, 

 a Frenchman exhibited a set of twenty-five large, clear-sounding 



^ Mr. Peter Crosthwaite, founder of the Crosthwaite Museum, Keswick, discovered 

 tlie first musical stoues, on June 11, 1785, on tlie sand-beds of the river Greta, near 

 Keswick. This set consists of sixteen in number, upon which any tune in the natural 

 key can be played. They are composed of hornblende slate and gneiss, two of the 

 lower rocks of the Skiddaw' strata. — Notes and Queries, No. 267, p. 112. 



