the Mode in which it administers to the Perception of Sound. 371 



before reaching that degree of perfection with which many are 

 capable of discriminating the most complicated harmonies. 



This process of education may be surmised to be greatly faci- 

 litated by the possession of the complete and perfect instrument ; 

 and it by no means follows that, because the education once ac- 

 quired through its instrumentality can to a certain limited extent 

 be turned to account by the imperfect organ, therefore the needful 

 training could equally have been attained by the aid of the latter 

 alone. 



The relation of the ear in its normal condition to the ear de- 

 prived of the membrana tympani may be likened to that between 

 a violin w T ith the ordinary provision of four strings and the same 

 instrument when three of its strings have been taken away: 

 with regard to which it may be observed that, although in the 

 latter case a musical prodigy has been known to elicit from it 

 effects which, in the absence of actual experience, would have 

 passed belief, it is at the same time clear that, without the skill 

 and dexterity acquired upon the more perfect instrument,, no 

 such effects could have been producible. 



I now propose to advert to one or two miscellaneous points of 

 interest connected with the subject. 



I. I would in the first place recall attention to the description 

 of the muscles of the ear already cited from Mr. Wharton Jones 

 (vide ante, p. 125), who informs us that the muscles attached to 

 the malleus have been by some anatomists [herein following 

 Sommerring] stated to be three in number, of which two are 

 laxative and one a tensor of the tympanal membrane. Of 

 these Mr. Jones declares that the last named only can be strictly 

 demonstrated, and that the supposed laxatores tympani are 

 simply ligaments. 



Now of these latter it is clear that, had they been attached to 

 muscles which would have relaxed the tympanum, being of the 

 nature of tendons and therefore fibrous and inextensible, they 

 would operate to resist any further stretching of the membrana 

 tympani ; so that if the membrane had been elastic (which, as has 

 been shown, and as is well known, it is not), and to that extent 

 capable of being stretched by the action of condensed waves in- 

 cident upon it, these so-called laxatores tympani would prevent 

 any such effect taking place, and would thus, as it would appear, 

 have been of themselves sufficient to obviate any action upon the 

 sensorium of condensed waves — thus showing that the laxatores 

 tympani ligaments tend to corroborate the effect resulting from 

 the inelastic character of the membrane. 



II. The foregoing conclusion is of peculiar importance when 

 we come to consider the auditory apparatus of birds, in which 

 and in that of mammalia alone is to be found a true tympanum. 



