246 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XI. No. 277 



stood. I have said that we must obtain the complete mythologies 

 of each linguistic stock of America, and we must work until we 

 have shown what the characters of the myths of each stock really 

 represent. This done, each stock is to be compared with that most 

 nearly related to it, and then a general comparison of all. The final 

 result will be a scientific American mythology. If the Aryan field 

 is worked in a similarly careful manner, we shall have a complete 

 Celtic, Teutonic, Greek, Slavonic, Persian, and other mythologies, 

 and, finally, Aryan mythology as a whole. 



" There still remain Africa, Australia, and the Pacific Islands, 

 where there are materials of the highest value for the completion of 

 mythologic science and the history of the human mind, — materials 

 which are perishing every day, and which will never be collected if 

 missionaries and travellers are to collect them. You could no more 

 make a collection of myths through the agency of missionaries and 

 travellers than you could make a geological survey of the United 

 States if you depended on the voluntary and intermittent efforts of 

 missionaries and travellers, some having, but most not having, defi- 

 nite ideas about geology or topography. 



" Though mythology is as nothing on Wall Street in comparison 

 with geology, the time, I think, is coming when a good number of 

 men will place it higher; because mythology is to the history of the 

 human mind what geology is to the history of the earth, — docu- 

 mentary evidence of the character of its different epochs. Even 

 now there are few persons who would say that the earth on which 

 he treads is better than man. You remember the words of the 

 great poet, — , i 



" ' The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palacetj 

 The solemn temples, the great globe itself, i; 

 Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve. 

 And, like this insubstantial pageant, faded, 

 Leave not a rack behind.' 



" When that time comes, it will be found that the only real, the 

 only permanent, results achieved on earth were those relating to 

 the human mind." 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS IN WASHINGTON. 



Phonographs, Graphophones, etc.; Curious Experiments with Jets of 

 Water. — Replenishing Rivers with Shad. — More about the 

 Water-Spouts. — United States Fish Commission Work on the 

 Pacific Coast. 



Instruments for Recording and Reproducing Speech. 



Prof. Alexander Graham Bell read, at the last meeting of 

 the Fortnightly Club, a paper upon recent inventions for recording 

 and reproducing speech, exhibiting, to illustrate what he said, 

 some of the latest and most curious devices that have been pro- 

 duced. He explained the nomenclature of the subject as he 

 thought it ought to be used, by saying that a phonograph is an in- 

 strument for making a record of speech; phonogram, the record 

 so made ; and graphophone, an instrument for reproducing speech 

 from a phonogram. In some cases the phonograph and grapho- 

 phone are the same in most of their parts, but in many they are 

 entirely different. 



Professor Bell exhibited the graphophone, of which a number 

 are now in practical use, and which, in its essential parts, is similar 

 to Edison's phonograph. The record is made on a cylinder 

 covered with wax or paraffine, and the speech is reproduced by 

 conducting the sounds to a diaphragm connected to an open 

 trumpet-shaped instrument, or, by wires to devices placed upon the 

 ears, vibrations corresponding to those that were produced when 

 the record was made. 



A modification of these instruments was shown, in which the rec- 

 ord was made upon a pasteboard disk revolved upon a shaft in a 

 horizontal plane. The upper surface of the disk is covered with 

 wax, upon which a similar impression to that on the wax-covered 

 cylinder is made by a stylus connected with a diaphragm which is 

 caused to vibrate by the sound of the voice. The record is a 

 spiral groove cut in the wax. The reproduction is obtained in a 

 manner similar to that used in the cylindrical machine. The 

 principal advantage which this form of the instrument is expected 

 to present over the older, cylindrical form is in the greater facility 



of multiplying copies. Electrotypes are much more readily made 

 from the flat disks than from the cylinders. From these electrotypes- 

 other disks covered with wax, and that with tinfoil to prevent stick- 

 ing, obtain the spiral impression by pressure of the former upon 

 the latter ; and when one of these duplicates, the tinfoil having 

 been removed, is put into the instrument, the reproduction of 

 speech is as perfect as from the disk on which the original record 

 was made. 



The most interesting and curious part of Professor Bell's paper 

 related to experiments based upon investigations and discoveries 

 made by Dr. Chichester Bell in regard to the effects of sounds upon 

 jets of fluid. It is well known that if a jet of fluid, like water, is 

 placed in sound-waves, it is not only sensitive to them, but it repro- 

 duces them as the string of a musical instrument, tuned in unison 

 with that of another, will vibrate, and reproduce the tones given 

 out by the first. It is not easy to hear the sound or speech repro- 

 duced by the jet of water. The former mode was to connect the 

 hearing-tube with a rubber diaphragm placed in the jet of water, 

 which is discharged perpendicularly from above, at a given press- 

 ure, from a very small orifice. When the rubber is held very close 

 to the orifice, the sound reproduced is very faint ; but, as it is- 

 moved away, it increases in volume until the point of maximunv 

 loudness is reached ; then it diminishes again until near the point 

 where the stream begins to break ; and then it is broken up, and is 

 entirely unintelligible. As the sounds to be reproduced by the jet 

 have to be made in the same room, and very near to the jet of 

 water, it is very difficult for any but a practised ear to detect the 

 one from the other. 



In order to make this more satisfactory. Dr. Chichester Bell 

 made the following experiment. Substituting two platinum wires 

 for the rubber diaphragm with a small piece of some non-conduct- 

 ing substance inserted between their ends, he placed this in the jet 

 at the point where the largest volume of sound has been found to- 

 be reproduced. These wires being connected with an electric bat- 

 tery, and a telephone placed in the circuit, it was possible to have 

 the speaker and listener almost any distance apart. With this ap- 

 paratus, speech was not only reproduced, but with increased 

 volume : the jet of water not only spoke, but acted also as a micro- 

 phone to magnify the sounds it made. 



Upon these experiments were based those which Professor Self 

 explained to the club. The jet of water, somewhat colored, was- 

 discharged upon a glass plate placed in it at the point from which- 

 the greatest volume of sound was known to issue in reproducing 

 speech. This caused the jet to spread out in a thin film over the 

 plate. The under side of the glass was covered with an opaque 

 substance in which there was a small slit through which a small 

 amount of light could pass. Behind the slit a moving piece of 

 photographic paper was placed, upon which the record was made. 

 Then a person spoke over the plate, and the result was a very curi- 

 ous line upon the photographic paper. When this line was trans- 

 ferred to gelatine in the ordinary way. it was found that a series of 

 elevations and depressions was produced, which could be felt with' 

 the fingers, and from which an electrotype could easily be made. 

 This showed that the sound-waves, striking the film of water on the 

 glass, caused constant changes in the thickness of the latter, and 

 thus caused a variation in the intensity of the light that passed 

 through the slit. From such a record as' this, it will probably be a 

 simple problem to reproduce the speech. Professor Bell exhibited 

 specimens of the original record upon the photographic paper, of 

 the negative that is made for the transfer to the gelatine, and of the 

 gelatine after the transfer had been made. The possibility of de- 

 veloping from these experiments an instrument for the reproduc- 

 tion of sounds that may be superior to any yet made is what makes 

 them so interesting. 



Shad-Hatching. 



The shad-hatching by the LTnited States Fish Commission this- 

 year is confined to four stations, — one at Fort Washington, on the 

 Potomac ; one at Havre de Grace and another at Battery Island, 

 on the Susquehanna ; and one on board the ' Fish hawk,' on the 

 Delaware. The season for taking eggs will continue until the last 

 week in May or the first week in June ; and the number of eggs cap- 

 tured this year up to i\Iay 19 was far greater than had been taken 

 at the same stations at the corresponding date of 1887, when the 



