1810] 
blind may partake of it. Lame people, 
who cannot stand upright, may also en- 
joy a considerable and useful portion of 
exercise, by sitting in a chair and striking 
their arms forcibly and alternately to- 
wards the ground, which will shake their 
bodies, diffuse an agreeable warmth, and 
greatly assist the digestion of food. 
The skipping cord should be intro- 
duced and recommended im all boarding- 
schools, as the medium of a most salu- 
tary exercise, particularly among young 
females. It may be made not only a 
healthful, but graceful exercise, being 
well calculated to display a light figure 
to advantage. I have frequently found 
people complaining of cold feet, before 
going to bed and after. ‘ For myself, I 
hardly know what it 1s to have cold feet. 
This is owing to the exercise I take in 
the modes here described. If any tend- 
ency to coldness in the feet is felt, you 
will find by following these methods, in 
less than four minutes, a gentle glow 
spreading itself through the feet, and all 
otber parts of the body. 
Another method for preventing cold 
feet at bed-time is this: Draw off your 
stockings just before undressing ; and rub 
your ancles and feet with your hand, as 
hard as you can bear the pressure, for 
five or ten minutes; and you will never 
have to complain of cold feet in bed. 
It is hardly conceivable what a plea- 
surable glow this diffuses. Frequent 
washing of the feet, and rubbing them 
thoroughly dry with a linen cloth or flan- 
nel, is also very useful. In the eastern 
countries, the washing of feet is thought 
extremely salutary, and is a mark of re- 
spect usually shewn to strangers. In 
removing from the feet the accumulating 
dirt that obstructs the pores, we greatly 
promote health, by facilitating that emis- 
sion from them that nature intended, 
and which, if long obstructed, gives rise 
to disorders of the legs and lower extre- 
mities, that often continue during life. 
BanBuRIENSIS. 
— ee 
For the Monthly Magazine. 
On a PRETENDED MUSICAL DISCOVERY. 
THIN quarto volume, printed in 
1725, was lately put into my hands, 
entitled “The Tonometer,” by Am- 
brose Warren, a lover of music; who 
occupies the first nine pages of his work 
in narrating his life, and the history of a 
grand discovery which he pretended to 
have made, viz. that thirty-two notes 
are necessary in the octave instead of 
thirteen. After informing his readers, 
in page 8, that he drew a plan of a 
Pretended Musical Discovery. 
413 
tonometer, (of which a plate is given,} 
and had it made by an able workman, 
he says, that he, ‘‘after divers trials of 
strings, pins, @&c. strung it with two 
wire-strings off the same roll, with three 
moving bridges, and the strings to be 
wound up with two five endless screw- 
pins, to the utmost nicety of tuning to 
any chord or pitch: then [set it to my 
two-stopped harpsichord, one stop of 
which taned the common scale way, the 
exactest I could; the other stop tuned, 
according to the nineteen (other) notes, 
flats or sharps, (which) I wanted more 
particularly to explain.” By help of all 
these, duly prepared, with an exact broad 
diagonal scale and large compasses, did 
Mr, Warren proceed to compare every 
note; and thus, says he, “I proceeded 
to take the exactest number and propor- 
tion I could, from the uut to the several 
two small moving bridges: but,” contis 
nues he, “Tam neither so vain or hardy 
as to afirm, that [ have found and given 
the very precise number to one or two 
tenth parts of the 1000.” 
On reading the above, I flattered my- 
self that I should find what I have long 
been in search of, a careful experim rent 
and calculation for reducing to numbers 
the thirteen notes of the cominon scale, 
as usually tuned, as well as the numbers 
answering to Mr..Warren’s nineteen 
supplemental notes, as he calls them: I 
was considerably surprised however, on 
turning to the last of his tables, to find 
that the thirty numbers therein given 
to seven places of figures, are exactly 
thirty-one péotiietvical mean proporti- 
onals between five hurdred and one 
thousand; and on turning to Dr, 
Smith’s Harmonic’ page 295, I found 
twenty-one of them to, agree with Huy- 
gens’s monochord numbers there given ; 
and thus it appears that the wonderlul 
discovery which it is the object of this 
volume to explain, was, without doubt, 
pirated from Huygens’s “ Harmonic 
Cycle,” who died thirty years befure, 
Like some of our modern temperers, «rx 
musical quacks, this Mr. Warren affec.s 
to ridicule what he does not undersian’, 
and says that there are not “two sors 
of whole tones, majorand minor sor three 
sorts of semitones, major, minor, a: d 
minus; and as for comina, schism, &c.” 
he says, such are * uudiscernab'e 
terms !” 
The Foundling Hospital organ has, as 
I have lately been informed, sixteen 
notes or pipes in each octave, instead 
of fourteen, the number which has fre- 
quently been mentioned as composing 
its 
