on the Membrana Tympani. 13 



The nicety or correctness of a musical ear being the result 

 of muscular action, renders it, in part, an acquirement; for, 

 although the original formation of these muscles in some ears 

 renders them more capable of arriving at this perfection in their 

 action, early cultivation is still necessary for that purpose ; and 

 it is found that an ear, which upon the first trials seemed unfit 

 to receive accurate perceptions of sounds, shall, by early and 

 constant application, be rendered tolerably correct, but never 

 can attain excellence. There are organs of hearing in which 

 the parts are so nicely adjusted to one another, as to render 

 them capable of a degree of correctness in hearing sounds 

 which appears preternatural. 



Children who during their infancy are much in the society 

 of musical performers, will be naturally induced to attend more 

 to inarticulate sounds than articulate ones, and by these means 

 acquire a correct ear, which, after listening for two or three 

 years to articulate sounds only, would have been attained with 

 more difficulty. 



This mode of adapting the ear to different sounds, appears 

 to be one of the most beautiful applications of muscles in the 

 body ; the mechanism is so simple, and the variety of effects so 

 great. 



Several ways in which the correctness of hearing is affected 

 by the wrong actions of the muscles of the tympanum, that 

 appeared to be inexplicable, can be readily accounted for, now 

 that the means by which the membrane adjusts itself are un- 

 derstood. The following are instances of this kind. 



Case 1. A gentleman thirty-three years of age, who possess- 

 ed a very correct ear, so as to be capable of singing in concert, 

 though he had never learned music, was suddenly seized with a 



