Page:Young - Outlines of experiments and inquiries respecting sound and light (1800).djvu/43

 they are by the repeated experiments of Professor ; it is not therefore brought forward as sufficiently controverting those calculations, but as showing the necessity of a revision of the experiments. Scarcely any note could ever be heard when a rod was loosely held at its extremity; nor when it was held in the middle, and struck one-seventh of the length from one end. The very ingenious method of Professor, of observing the vibrations of plates by strewing fine sand over them, and discovering the quiescent lines by the figures into which it is thrown, has hitherto been little known in this country: his treatise on the phænomena is so complete, that no other experiments of the kind were thought necessary. Glass vessels of various descriptions, whether made to sound by percussion or friction, were found to be almost intirely free from harmonic notes; and this observation coincides with the experiments of.

The human voice, which was the object originally proposed to be illustrated by these researches, is of so complicated a nature, and so imperfectly understood, that it can be on this occasion but superficially considered. No person, unless we except M., has published any thing very important on the subject of the formation of the voice, before or since ; his reasoning has fully shown the analogy between the voice and the voix humaine and regal organ-pipes: but his comparison with the whistle is unfortunate; nor is he more happy in his account of the falsetto. A kind of experimental analysis of the voice may be thus exhibited. By drawing in the breath, and at the same time properly contracting the larynx, a slow vibration of the ligaments