2 W. B. Rogers on Sonorous Flames. 
i 
unexpected interest to the subject, as is well shown in the curious 
observations of Prof. LeConte in the January number of the 
Am. Journ. of Science; and I need hardly add that they have 
also prompted the experiments and reflections embodied in the 
present paper. In presenting these I shall follow the order in 
which the experiments were made and from time to time com- 
municated to the Boston Nat. Hist. Soc., and the American 
Academy during the past winter.* 
1. Production of musical sounds by flames escaping from wicks 
or wire-gauze—Karly in these experiments I found that the 
usual absence of the sonorous effect in the case of lamps or can- 
dles burned under the same conditions as the gas, is not due,as 7 
might be supposed, to a mechanical interference of the wick 
with the vibrating motion. Wicks of cotton thread and of as- 
bestus introduced into a jet-pipe of coal-gas one-tenth ofaninch =| 
in diameter do not prevent the singing even when they project =| 
far into the flame, and unless spread out raggedly at the sides 
do not greatly impair the purity of the tone. Indeed the diff- 
culty of obtaining continuous musical sounds from a common 
flame with a wick would seem to be due rather to the nature of 
the combustible matter, which requiring a very large supply of 
air to produce the explosions and evolving too little h 
combustion, is liable to be extinguished before the musical sound 
feet long. The effect occurs only at a particular stage of the 
flame, and depends on so nice an adjustment between this and — 
the tube as to make its repetition difficult and uncertain. With 
sulphuric ether the same arrangement is more frequently suc- 
cessful, but even this furnishes only capricious results. 
To obtain an ether flame which will readily assume the sono- 
rous state I use a lamp consisting of a glass tube about eight 
inches long and one-fourth inch in diameter, open below and 
neral theory of the vibration as explained 
sented at a meeting of the Warren Club 
