2 UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI STUDIES 



one, to the writer's knowledge, has ever expressed himself 

 as inclined to look for it there. For its hydrodynamic func- 

 tion it is clearly of no great importance whether the tube is 

 curved or straight, and we shall speak of it in the following 

 for the most part as if it were straight, in order to simplify 

 the discussion. The real advantage of this shape of the tube 

 is doubtless a mere anatomical one, it being possible thus to 

 find a better place for it in the base of the skull. 



We must, in order to understand the function of this 

 tube, be aware of the fact that it is filled with a watery fluid, 



lymph, and that its walls consist of hard 

 The contents of unyielding bone. Now, when we go 

 the tube, a fluid, through the literature of the subject, we 

 is incompressible often see writers speak of waves in the fluid 



which are said to pass along the tube as 

 air waves move in a tube filled with air. Views of 

 this kind cannot, of course, contribute towards an un- 

 derstanding of the process of stimulation of the periph- 

 eral nerve ends. They are not rational considerations of the 

 facts before us, but theoretical dreams, forgetting the physical 

 conditions of the case. Let us regard the velocity of the 

 sound in such a fluid as that of the inner ear as about fourteen 

 hundred meters, let us remember that the whole length of the 

 tube is only a couple of centimeters, let us understand, then, 

 that even with rather high tones of short wave lengths — 

 beyond the musical range — the total length of the tube is only 

 a small part of the spatial length of the waves said to travel 

 up and down the tube; and we shall admit at once that to 

 speak of tone waves travelling in the lymph up and down 

 the tube is like speaking of a horse race which is to take place 

 within a dog kennel. We have to follow the custom of the 

 physicists who in such cases neglect the compressibilit}^ and 

 elasticity of the small volume of fluid altogether. We must, 

 therefore, regard the fluid in the cochlea as being of identical 



