direct reasoning from first principles. (271.) Whenever an impulse of any kind is conveyed by the air, to our ears, it produces the impression of sound; but when such an impulse is regularly and uniformly repeated in extremely rapid succession, it gives us that of a musical note, the pitch of the note depending on the rapidity of the succession (see art. 153.). The sense of harmony, too, depends on the periodical recurrence of coincident impulses on the ear, and affords, perhaps, the only instance of a sensation for whose pleasing impression a distinct and intelligible reason can be assigned. (272.) Acoustics, then, or the science of sound, is a very considerable branch of physics, and one which has been cultivated from the earliest ages. Even Pythagoras and Aristotle were not ignorant of the general mode of its transmission through the air, and of the nature of harmony; but as a branch of science, independent of its delightful application in the art of music, it could be hardly said to exist, till its nature and laws became a matter of experimental enquiry to Bacon and Galileo, Mersenne and Wallis; and of mathematical investigation to Newton, and his illustrious successors, Lagrange and Euler. From that time its progress, as a branch both of mathematical and experimental science, has been constant and accelerated. A curious and beautiful method of observation, due to Chladni, consists in the happy device of strewing sand over the surfaces of bodies in a state of sonorous vibration, and marking the figures it assumes. This has made their motions susceptible of ocular examination, and has been lately much improved on, and varied in its application, by M. Savart, to whom we also owe a succession of instructive researches on every point connected with the subject of sound, which may rank among the finest specimens of modern experimental enquiry. But the subject is far from being exhausted; and, indeed, there are few branches of physics which promise at once so much amusing interest, and such important consequences, in its bearings on other subjects, and especially, through the medium of strong analogies, on that of light. _Light and Vision._