190 Proceedings. 



average size of heads since the passing of the Education 

 Act. He had been surprised to find that the books revealed 

 a well-marked decrease. A discussion ensued, during which 

 Mr. W. H. Johnson suggested that the phenomenon might 

 be due to the alleged average decrease in stature with the 

 extension of manufacturing industry and town life. It was 

 also pointed out that in recent years there had been a 

 tendency to have the hair of the head cut more closely than 

 formerly, which might possibly be the explanation of the 

 apparent diminution. 



Dr. CHARLES JOHN Hall read a paper on "Thomas 

 Augustine Arne as an Inventor of Musical Form," in which 

 he claimed for Arne the invention of the modern binary 

 form. Dr. Hall illustrated his paper by playing selections 

 from the overture to " Artaxerxes" and the sixth of Arne's 

 sonatas, in contrast with the older Handelian form. In the 

 discussion which ensued, Mr. FARADAY drew attention to 

 the analogies between the physics of music and chemistry 

 suggested by Newlands and Mendelejeff's "periodic law" 

 of the elements, and asked whether, if the chemist attempted 

 to repeat a musical composition in forming compounds from 

 what might be spoken of as a chemical key-board, interest- 

 ing results might not be obtained ? It was suggested that 

 the time of the musical notes, for instance, in the experi- 

 ment on chemical compositions, might be represented by 

 relatively proportionate quantities of the elements — or of 

 the energy of which they are the expression — taken as the 

 prototypes of particular notes in the musical octave. 



