Birds and All Nature, Vol. 4, No. 4, October 1898: Illustrated by Color PhotographyVarious
History
Birds and All Nature, Vol. 4, No. 4, October 1898: Illustrated by Color Photography
Various
Birds -- Periodicals; Natural history -- Periodicals
The same is noticeable in the hearing of people. To some persons a
note one octave higher than the highest note of a piano, cannot be
heard. Others can hear such a tone, and yet others are made painfully
nervous by it without knowing quite what the trouble is. To some the
chirp of the Sparrow is the upper limit of hearing, others can hear
the voice of the Bat, yet others are able to hear the notes of insects
that range higher in pitch than the voice of the Bat. Dr. Wollaston
says, "As there is nothing in the nature of the atmosphere to prevent
the existence of vibrations incomparably more frequent than any of
which we are conscious, we may imagine that animals like the Grilli
(Grasshoppers) whose powers appear to commence nearly where ours
terminate, may have the faculty of hearing still sharper sounds which
we do not know to exist; and that there may be other insects, hearing
nothing in common with us, but endowed with a power of exciting, and a
sense which perceives vibrations of the same nature, indeed, as those
which constitute our ordinary sounds, but so remote that the animals
who perceive them may be said to possess another sense agreeing with
our own solely in the medium by which it is excited."
The human ear is capable of hearing musical sounds produced by
vibrations ranging from twenty-four in a second of time to forty
thousand. This indicates that humanity is confined in interest to the
motions of the atmosphere within these limits. The possibilities of
higher and lower fields of music are such that one writer has said that
it may be that the air about us is constantly resounding to the music
of the heavenly hosts while our dull ears with their limited powers are
unable to catch the poorest note in that celestial harmony.
Sound travels about one thousand ninety feet in a second in the air.
Through other elastic mediums it varies in speed. The beholder of an
explosion of dynamite in a harbor receives three shocks, one coming by
way of the air, another by water, and the third through the earth, all
arriving at different times.
It is a fortunate thing that low sounds travel as rapidly as high
ones and loud sounds no faster than soft ones. Thus the playing of
a band upon the water, at a distance, is beautiful, because all the
tones powerful enough to reach the listener do so at the right time to
preserve harmony. If it were not for this equality in traveling power,
no music on a grand scale could be possible, for those sitting at a
distance from the performers would be in a sea of discord from the late
arrival of tones which should have blended with those gone before. In
spite of the fact that our highest appreciable note is but one-third of
an inch in length of wave and the wave of our lowest note exceeds forty
feet in length, all sounds produced in harmony travel in harmony till
exhausted in space.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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