390 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XV. No. 375. 



of the philosophy of the art, such as Helm- 

 holtz, Hanslick, Pole and others, believe that 

 the truth lies between these two extremes — • 

 that the fundamental rules are governed by 

 physical laws, while more complex questions of 

 form are mainly, at least, arbitrary. The his- 

 tory of music appears to sustain the last view. 

 The evolution of the diatonic scale, the com- 

 paratively recent rejection of all modes but 

 the modern so-called major and minor, the 

 absence of rhythm, as we know it, until about 

 the eleventh or twelfth centuries, and of to- 

 nality, or reference in melody to a tonic or 

 keynote, until the seventeenth century, all 

 seem to support the theory that many present 

 assthetical rules of music are temporary and 

 fortuitous and probably of no greater validity 

 than those they have superseded. The octave, 

 fifth and fourth of the modern scale are ex- 

 cepted, by those who hold this view, as resting 

 upon a physical basis; but the other intervals 

 are held to be arbitrary; and the necessity to 

 the modern ear of a definite key, and all the 

 requirements comprised under the term 'form,' 

 are regarded as mainly casual, not necessarily 

 indicating any advance toward a fixed ideal. 



But if we find bird nnisic undergoing an evo- 

 lution that parallels our own progress — if ad- 

 vance in each independently follows the same 

 lines, we have excellent evidence that there is 

 an ideal standard toward which all progress 

 must tend, a law which determines the direc- 

 tion of development of our aesthetical rules. 

 A study of the songs of the birds seems to 

 support this idea. Many birds, as for example 

 the Carolina wren, wood thrush, chickadee 

 and chewink, use the intervals of the modern 

 scale. Birds songs are often rhythmical and 

 may be divided into regular measures properly 

 accented ; and several of the formal rules of 

 human music may be found governing the 

 music of the birds. 



Mr. Olds gave examples illustrating this 

 statement. These included bits of melody 

 satisfying to the human musical taste, phrases 

 repeated on the same or a different pitch, an- 

 tiphonal phrases coupled together by a single 

 bird, or by two, with evident intention, and 

 one instance of a song (by the wood pewee) 

 in which the rules of construction governing 



many ballads were followed. These Mr. Olds 

 said were a few of the instances he had noted 

 indicating a parallel and independent mu- 

 sical evolution and so leading to the conclu- 

 sion suggested, but he wished to investigate 

 further before positively announcing a prin- 

 ciple opposed to the weight of authority and 

 apparently in conflict with previous evidence. 

 F. A. Lucas. 



PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



The 54:6th meeting was held February 1, 

 1902, Vice-President Marvin in the chair. 



Professor Simon Newcomb spoke on 'Recent 

 Views of the Universe.' He called attention 

 to the probability that the density of most 

 stars is much less than that of the sun and the 

 temperature higher; if the sun were removed 

 to the same distance as the stars some of them 

 would appear only 1/100 as bright as it, while 

 Canopus and Rigel would be more than 1,000 

 times, probably 10,000 times, as bright. The 

 probability is that most stars have dark bodies 

 revolving around them. Our system is, so far 

 as we know, very unusual in having circular 

 orbits; the stellar orbits are generally quite 

 eccentric, and life such as we know could not 

 probably exist under the extremes of tempera- 

 ture prevailing near any star. The distribu- 

 tion of the stars appears to be remarkably 

 symmetrical around the axis and plane of the 

 MiUjy Way. The thinning out is slight up to 

 a parallax of .01 second, and the stars extend 

 to at least 1,200 times the distance of a Gen- 

 tauri. It is possible that the apparent limit 

 may be due to absorption of light, caused for 

 example by cosmic dust. Reference was made 

 to Lord Kelvin's and J. J. Thomson's recent 

 papers and the fact pointed out that all the 

 new stars are in the Milijy Way and therefore 

 probably have a very small parallax, perhaps 

 .001 second, more or less. 



Professor F. H. Bigelow, of the Weather 

 Bureau, spoke on 'Aristotle's Physics and 

 Modern Physics.' Aristotle's profound work 

 on the fundamental principles of nature ought 

 to be better known to modern students. He 

 defended the theory of nature which avoids 

 both the extreme idealist view and the extreme 

 material view, and developed the theory of 



