242 
Proceedhigs of the Royal Irish Academy, 
opened a new field of inquiry. The canine teeth, like all the others, 
contain a canal through which pass branches of the internal maxillary 
artery and nerve in the closest proximity. The artery receives and 
aids -the pulsations of the heart, and the nerve transmits the sensation 
of it to the sensorium. 
What may have been Earl Stanhope's mode of conveying to his 
ear the sound of his tuning-forks he has not informed us ; but it is 
probable that, occupied as he was with investigating musical sounds, 
this philosophical inquirer would try every mode which could best 
satisfy his singularly acute perception, especially that which was 
capable of making the strongest impression. The effect of applying 
the fork to the teeth was well known. Sound," says Dr. Thomas 
Young, is not simply a vibration or undulation of the air, for there 
are many sounds in which the air is not concerned, as when a tuning- 
fork, or any other sounding body, is held between the teeth." Com- 
petent authorities have recommended that mode of using the fork 
while the tuner's hands are both engaged in the process. It is pro- 
bable that this mode, amongst others, was tried by Earl Stanhope as 
capable of producing the greatest effect ; and it was, perhaps, in this 
way he was led into the erroneous belief of the beatings of the fork, 
and the necessity of a new tuning instrument. 
If the foregoing observations be well founded, it follows that this 
accomplished and philosophical nobleman was mistaken in supposing 
that the tuning-fork is not to be relied on as a standard for determin- 
ing the concert pitch of the diatonic diapason. I have endeavoured to 
prove that the beatings, which he attributed to an inequality of the 
prongs of his fork, could not be produced by that inequality, if such 
existed ; that filing would not be a remedy, and could only act in 
altering the pitch ; that a beat in any fork is impossible ; that the 
beatings which Earl Stanhope perceived were the beatings of his own 
heart. 
The pitch to which musical instruments and voices must be tuned 
for a concert is a matter of much interest both to the performers and 
the audience. It has always been a subject of controversy between 
instrumentalists and vocalists ; the former desiring to raise the pitch, 
the latter to lower it ; until, at length, the interposition of legislative 
authority became necessary. A Eoyal Commission was issued a few 
years since in Paris, charged with seeking the means of establishing 
an uniform musical diapason" throughout Erance ; and of determin- 
ing a sonorous standard which would answer as an invariable type ; and 
of indicating means of assuring its adoption and conservation. After 
an extensive and laborious inquiry amongst the musicians and musical 
establishments of all the nations of Europe and America, the commis- 
sion made its report, in Eebruary, 1859 ; and on this the Minister of 
State founded a decree that in all the musical establishments of Erance 
a normal tuning-fork shall be instituted of such pitch that the note 
la (A) shall consist of 870 double vibrations in a second. 
