23U 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XXI. No. 528. 



are ordinarily heard in conversation. If the 

 wire is reversed, you hear the same sounds 

 presented in reverse order. You hear what 

 you would hear if you were to follow the 

 sound waves after they have passed the ear, 

 traveling through them in a radial direction 

 with twice the velocity of sound. The re- 

 versed words are perfectly definite in char- 

 acter, and constitute a new language related 

 in a simple mathematical way to that orig- 

 inally spoken. One might learn to pronounce 

 a sentence of this language, thus derived from 

 an English sentence, impress it upon a fresh 

 wire, and the instrument on reversal would 

 translate it into English. This new language 

 might be called the Hsilgne. It is related 

 to the English language in a way that may be 

 roughly represented by the equation 



Hsilgne = English X cos 180°. 



This woi-d forming the first member of the 

 equation is not the English spelling of the 

 word English when pronounced backwards. 

 In order to properly typify the relation be- 

 tween the two languages, not only should the 

 order of the letters be reversed, but each 

 letter should be reversed as to right and left, 

 as when the word is seen by reflection from a 

 mirror. 



The ear may, however, be supposed to tra- 

 verse the system of sound waves produced by 

 an orator, in any one of an infinite variety of 

 directions. The path traversed by the ear, 

 and a radial line drawn to the mouth of the 

 speaker, may make any angle a between 0° 

 and 180°. If the velocity of the ear be cor- 

 respondingly varied, we shall have in the 

 above case a great spectrum of languages 

 lying between Hsilgne and English. The 

 variable language will in general be repre- 

 sented by the equation 



Language X=: English X cos a. 



As the angle a approaches 90°, the variable 

 language becomes more barbarous and inar- 

 ticulate. When a = 90°, the ear would be 

 moving parallel to the wave fronts, and noth- 

 ing would be heard. The conditions realized 

 are analogous to those which hold in a pho- 

 tographic i)lato when the fog line is ap- 

 proached, separating the negative from the 



positive picture. It would be very interest- 

 ing to determine whether there is any radical 

 difference between the positives and the cor- 

 responding negatives of a spoken language. 

 Each language, corresponding to a given value 

 of a with English as a base, would have a 

 corresponding negative, where the angle is 

 a + 180. The Poulsen instrument is now 

 perfectly adapted to the study of the relation 

 of any language to its negative, if either be 

 placed on record in the wire. Of course in 

 such a reversal as the Poulsen instrument 

 gives, the grammatical construction is also 

 reversed. Some of the difiiculties that would 

 be met in learning to talk Hsilgne can be 

 realized by reading this communication back- 

 wards, beginning with the last word and end- 

 ing with the first. In such a reading the 

 words themselves are not reversed, but the 

 order in which they are presented to the ear 

 is that which would hold in the negative 

 language. Erancis E. JSTipher. 



QUOTATIOffS. 



SALARIES AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 



Speaking roughly, the rule may be said to 

 be that a full professor in Harvard College 

 receives $4,000 a year, an associate professor 

 $3,000, an assistant professor $2,000, an in- 

 structor $1,000, and an assistant from $250 

 to $400. In the last academic year there were 

 in the college 51 full professors, 2 associate 

 professors, 38 assistant professors, 7 lecturers, 

 1 tutor, 88 instructors, and 87 assistants. Of 

 the professors, 14 received $5,000; 1, $3,600; 

 10, $3,500; 3, $3,000; 4, $2,000; and 1, $1,000. 

 This showed a total item of salaries of about 

 $227,000. The actual average, based on the 

 exact figures, which are not those given here, 

 was $3,984, which confirms tlie impression that 

 the Harvard professor is a $4,000 man. 



The incomes of the other classes of instruc- 

 tors show similar variations. The two asso- 

 ciate professors receive $3,500; but salaries of 

 the assistant professors range from $3,000 

 down to $500; the average being $2,160. The 

 lecturers average $781 each, while the compen- 

 sation of instructors ranges from $2,000 to 

 $100, with an average of $999. The assistants 



