12 Dr. R. Konig on Manometric Flames. 



too late for the Exhibition; but I was able to exhibit them at the 

 Meeting of the Association of Natural Philosophers at Dresden 

 in 1868. I delayed their publication until now because I wished 

 to revise them with precision, but was always prevented by the 

 delicate state of my throat, which did not permit me such 

 fatiguing experiments. But now, since I can no longer hope 

 to recover, I have used my best endeavours to make the pictures 

 correct, and give them forth, not indeed as absolutely perfect, 

 but as nearly so as it was possible for me to make them. 



The drawings themselves are much more difficult than might 

 be supposed, particularly of the large flame-groups of the deeper 

 notes, not only on account of the evanescence of the pictures, 

 but also because the flame-summits do not always follow each 

 other, but are partly situated beneath one another, so that it 

 appears as though different flame-groups were intermingled, or 

 rather pushed partly one before another. But these flames, 

 whose background, so to say, is formed by other flames, easily 

 escape observation, particularly if the back ones are not so high, 

 nor the front ones so low, that the bright summits of the latter 

 stand out upon the blue lower parts of the former. We can 

 indeed, by a rapid rotation of the mirror, separate all the summits 

 from each other ; but then the whole group becomes difficult to 

 observe, on account of its great length and the great bending of 

 the flames. 



However imperfect the drawings may be on account of the 

 absence of some details, yet they give true pictures of the general 

 outline as portrayed in the mirror. If, for example, the vowel A 

 be sung on the note C, the picture shows a group from which a tall 

 bright flame rises near a smaller very blue one ; after these come 

 a whole mountain of regularly toothed flames. Now it is quite 

 possible that this ridge has really 9 summits, whilst I have only 

 drawn 8; for it has sometimes appeared to me that there were 

 more than that number on days when I produced this very low 

 note stronger and purer than usual ; but this does not change the 

 character of the whole group, which could never be mistaken for 

 that of V, 0, E, or I sung in the same note. In any case, there- 

 fore, these pictures appear to me sufficient for the representation 

 of the great difference in the appearance of the sound of the five 

 vowels, sung on the same note, as well as to show the manner 

 of the change of the flame-pictures of the same vowel from one 

 note to another. But this is the chief point, and indeed all 

 that can be attained with certainty by the apparatus; for just 

 on account of its great sensitiveness we must not hope for abso- 

 lutely correct pictures. The details in the group change most 

 remarkably, not only when the same vowel is sung in the same 

 note by different voices, but also when the same voice gives vowel 



