Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/429

Rh We are now, I think, prepared to consider the failure of reversibility in the larger experiments of 1822. Happily an incidental observation of great significance comes here to our aitl. It was observed and recorded at the time that while the reports of the guns at Villejuif were without echoes, a roll of echoes, lasting from twenty to twenty-five seconds, accompanied every shot at Montlhéry, being heard by the observers there. Arago, the writer of the report, referred these echoes to reflection from the clouds, an explanation which I think we are entitled to regard as problematical. The report says that "all the shots fired at Montlhéry were there accompanied



by a rolling sound like that of thunder." I have italicized a very significant word—a word which fairly applies to our experiments on gun-sounds at the South Foreland, where there was no sensible solution of continuity between explosion and echo, but which could hardly apply to echoes coming from the clouds. For, supposing the clouds to be only a mile distant, the sound and its echo would have been separated by an interval of nearly ten seconds. But there is no mention of any interval; and, had such existed, surely the word "followed," instead of "accompanied," would have been the one employed. The echoes, moreover, appear to have been continuous, while the clouds observed seem to have been separate. "These phenomena," says Arago, "never took place except at the moment when some clouds appeared." But from separate clouds a continuous roll of echoes could hardly come. When to this is added the experimental fact that clouds far denser than any ever formed in the atmosphere are demonstrably incapable of sensibly reflecting sound, while cloud-less air, which Arago pronounced echoless, has been proved capable of powerfully reflecting it, I think we have strong reason to question the hypothesis of the illustrious French philosopher.

And considering the hundreds of shots fired at the South Foreland, with the attention specially directed to the aërial echoes, when no single case occurred in which echoes of measurable duration did not accompany the report of the gun, I think Arago's statement, that at Villejuif no echoes were heard when the sky was clear, must simply mean that they vanished with great rapidity. Unless the attention