Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/584

 of a medical man conversant with the patient's peculiarities: particularly in the case of children should this precaution be observed.

Meteorological.—Professor Loomis continues his investigations of the development and phenomena of storms in the United States, in the July number of the "American Journal of Science." In this paper, the eleventh one of the series, it is shown that atmospheric disturbances during storms do not generally extend more than about a mile above the sea-level as they pass over New England. From observations made at the sea-level, as at Portland, simultaneously with observations at the summit of Mount Washington, it is found that during the passage of storms the usual system of circulating winds, does not in a majority of instances extend to a height of six thousand feet. The more violent the movement, however, the greater is the height attained by the disturbance. Another fact of interest is that the disturbance on the approach of a storm is felt at the surface sooner than at considerable elevations. Professor Loomis says that, "when during the progress of an area of low pressure the system of circulating winds reaches to the summit of Mount Washington, the change of wind to the east quarter usually begins at the surface stations eleven hours sooner than it does on the summit of that mountain." It thus appears that only in the lower portions of the atmosphere do the great storm movements occur, and they are first felt at or near the earth's surface.

Why is Music pleasurable?—Darwin, in "The Descent of Man," says of the problem, why musical tones in a certain order and rhythm give man and other animals pleasure, that it is at present insoluble. "We can no more give the reason than for the pleasantness of certain tastes and smells." But Mr. Xenos Clark, in the "American Naturalist," ingeniously essays a solution of this problem, and at the same time offers a theory of the origin of melody. "A musical sound," writes Mr. Clark, "is compound in its structure, being really a group of simple tones heard simultaneously. This group is composed of a ground-tone or fundamental, and a number of overtones, that decrease in intensity as they rise in pitch through a series of harmonic intervals. These intervals, the octave, fifth, fourth, and third, which thus occur in every musical sound we hear, are also at the basis of every human and, I hope to show, extra-human melody. . . . The thought at once arises that the peculiar, compound, harmonic structure of musical sounds has in some way impressed itself upon the auditory mechanism; so that melody, gradually growing under the guidance of the ear thus modified, has been molded into a musical form similar to that possessed by the group of harmonically related tones which we have seen to compose the sounds indicated. This seems very probable. For since each terminal nerve, of the thousands in the cochlea, responds to a given simple tone, the group of such tones forming a musical sound will excite a corresponding group of nerves, which will of course be related among themselves, as are the exciting tones among themselves; that is, they will be serially octaves, fifths, fourths, and thirds apart. Every nerve will therefore have always been stimulated in company with certain others, at harmonic intervals from it; and it is inevitable that the incessant and long-continued repetition of this cooperate activity should have resulted in some anatomical or functional bond; a pathway, as it were, leading from each member of the group to every other. The progress of any melody will be easiest along this harmonic pathway, worn by the physical structure of sound." This would be the origin of melody, and at the same time would explain why musical tones in a certain order give man and other animals pleasure.

The Social Relations of the Future.—The views of Mr. Matthew Arnold on the tendencies of our modern social and political life are very well summed up in a recent number of the "Athenæum" as follows: The inevitable future Mr. Arnold sees to be democracy: the many are continually growing less and less disposed to admire, and the few, that is the aristocracy, are becoming less and less qualified to command and captivate. Now, this is not only a fact, but one we should have foreseen long ago, for it is only an example and