PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
29 
CORK SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY SOCIETY. 
JANUARY 4, 1855. 
William Dowden, Esq., Y.P., in the Chair. 
Mr. R. Dowden read a paper, entitled 
NOTES ON SOME FAMILIAR FACTS CONNECTED WITH SOUNDS AND HEARING. 
Sounds are much affected in the impressions they make by comparison and by 
attention. It is known that sounds at night are heard much more distinctly than 
by day—that is, when the places where they are made are liable to the noise and 
bustle of day activity, and when these noises and bustle subsiding, leave the stillness 
of uight to permit the conveyance of sounds undisturbedly. 
That sounds can be drowned by noise we all know; Richard the Third cries out— 
“ Strike up drums, let not the heavens hear these tell-tale women rail on the Lord’s 
anointed.’’ Sometimes, in the calm evening, we hear distant music, which, by day, 
we could not hear, or distinguish so clearly. Some conditions of the air are 
described as being more favourable than others for the transmission of sounds; 
but that subject I do not now enter upon; comparison is my principal topic. 
Let any person go from Fleet-street, in London, to Ludgate-hill, and he 
will, of course, observe an increase of uproar; but if he proceed from 
Lincoln’s-Inn Fields, and compare its quietness with Holborn-hill, at mid¬ 
day, the contrast will be very remarkable. Taking a tour for another in¬ 
stance, let me come home, and tell you, that the reduction between the distances 
from the pitch of one noise to another, has here presented curious effects. In a 
masquerade-room, in Cork, there were some thousand or fifteen hundred 
masquers talking, shouting, singing; so that the very undertone or buzz of the 
room had a certain amount of general elevation. One gentleman, who perfigurated 
as Cornet Allopod, the sportsman and yeomanry apothecary in the play of “ The 
Poor Gentleman,” came in his cavalry dress, red, turned up with “ rhubarb- 
coloured lappetsand, intending to cause a sensation, he let fly one barrel of his 
fowling-piece; when what was his astonishment to find that, pooh, it made no 
more noise than a good popgun; this was too bad ; he thought he had not ram¬ 
med down his charge ; and, being resolved on gaining distinction, he fired his other 
barrel; alas, he had the same result; he won no applause, no more than if he 
had clapped his hands together ; but he thus learned, experimentally, the acous¬ 
tical fact, that the nature of our sound-perceptions are much influenced by 
comparison. 
Raising the pitch of sound has another effect worthy of a little notice; deafish 
persons can sometimes hear a little when they are addressed in a noise. There are 
probably two reasons for this fact—firstly, that the nerves of hearing may be 
somewhat stimulated out of their inertia by noise, and thus may be made suscep¬ 
tible. When hearing is promoted by beating a drum or braying a trumpet at a 
deafish ear, this may be one provocative to audition; but there is also another 
cause for this effect—in our common conversation with persons “ hard of hear¬ 
ing,” we scream some of our words, and then we drop into low cadences ; in this 
way we disturb, but do not satisfy, the obtuse hearer. Now, if we travel in a 
carriage, whose roll demands of the converser a steady, equable elevation of pitch, 
we are more likely to be heard than when we are at liberty to make fitful changes, 
from shouting to whispering. 
The next acoustic circumstance which has a marked result is, attention. We 
know that the ticking of a clock, and other habitually heard noises, cease to engage 
our notice, except we choose to attend ; but sometimes the same sound seems much 
louder when intensely observed than when treated with indifference. 
There is an echo which can be awaked within “ Gleana Coppuil”—“The 
Horse’s Glen”—in Mangerton Mountain ; this is a reverberatory percussion of the 
sound made ; and, of course, at every point whence it is reflected, some loss of the 
YOL. II. d 
