Prof. Alonzo Hall. Page. Ph. D.. Matter and Force. Associate Editor..... 26 Salvation in Hell. 1. J. I. Swander, D. D., Page. 55 Salvation in Hell. 2. J. I. Swander, D. D., 70 20 Sample Testimonials.. 32 More Volunteer Testimonials.. 48 Mr. Isaac Hoffer..... 143 New Friend, A. The Spectroscope. Thos. Second Reply to Sedley Taylor. Editor... 73 123 174 New Manifold Cyclopedia, The.. 95 New Proposition that will Satisfy the Seven Pages of Testimonials.. 64 84 115 79 66 Very Much .24, 46 1 105 Our Associate Editor.... 63 Our Great American Locust. Illustrated. 136 .144, 176, 192 49 The Marvel of the Age.. 191, 154 A MONTHLY JOURNAL OF SUBSTANTIALISM AND COLLATERAL DISCUSSIONS. A. WILFORD HALL, Ph. D., LL. D., Editor and Proprietor. (Author of the "Problem of Human Life," "Universalism Against Itself," Editor of the Scientific Arena, &c., &c.) ROBERT ROGERS, S. L. A., Associate Editor. Address all communications to A. WILFORD HALL, 23 Park Row, New York. Entered as second class matter at the New York Post Office. criticisms of his reply, involving the cardinal OUR WORK IN ENGLAND. We give below, at the request of many friends in England, including Drs. Pearce and Audsley, our reply to the chief points of criticism urged against Dr. Pearce's arguments in the London Musical Opinion by the eminent Prof. Sedley Taylor of Cambridge University. Our reply, though containing some points we have urged in previous volumes of the MICROCOSM, will bear re-examination and will be found re-assuring to our readers. They can not be answered by Dr. Taylor nor by any other advocate of the wave-theory: THE NEW SOUND-THEORY. DR. SEDLEY TAYLOR'S REPLY TO DR. PEARCE RE VIEWED BY DR. HALL. laws of the wave-theory, being conclusively answered and set aside, the weaker points of defence naturally cease to have any important weight. Now, without further introductory remarks, I will undertake to meet and neutralize the only criticisms urged by Dr. Taylor that really bear in support of the wave-theory with any degree of plausibility. Here is a full quotation of his remarks: "Dr. Pearce lays it down as an obvious consequence of the wave-theory that the sounding body which vibrates furthest, or causes the greatest disturbance of the air, should produce the loudest sound, and should be heard at the greatest distance.' It is, however, not true that a considerable extent of swing in a vibrating body necessarily sets up an equally extensive vibration in the air. Thus, to take the illustration adduced by Dr. Pearce, when a tuning-fork is in vibration a large part of the air in contact with the prongs slips off laterally from their faces, instead of being condensed or rarefied by their movement; and, therefore, but little wave motion is directly communicated by the To the Editor Musical Opinion and Music prongs to the air, and but a weak sound started in it. Trade Review: Sir,-In the September and October numbers of your journal Dr. Sedley Taylor, of Cambridge University, attempts a reply to the arguments which Dr. Pearce had condensed in previous issues from my writings on the substantial theory of sound as opposed to the wave-theory. I feel sure that your readers, seeing my name so often mentioned as the originator of the new theory of sound, will be interested in a full reply from me to Dr. Taylor's strictures, as well as an explicit statement from my pen as to the real principles of the Substantial Philosophy. I shall try to be as brief as the nature of the case will permit, and at the same time shall hope to be so explicit in my statements of facts and arguments that no advocate of the wave-theory will fail to see and feel their force. As a matter of course no one will expect me to make an exhaustive reply to every point raised by Dr. Taylor in his criticisms of Dr. Pearce's paper, as this would consume too much space; nor would the necessarily brief and imperfect discussion of so many incidental objections be at all necessary, since the main Accordingly, when a tuning-fork is held in the hand its note is feeble, but if its stem be made to touch a soundboard-the particles of air in contact with which can not slip off it laterally in anything like the same degree louder. It is, I think, a further error that, in the senas from the prongs-the sound heard becomes much tence quoted above, the carrying power of a sound is assumed to depend only on the amount of air disturbance caused in originating it, and not at all on the pitch and quality of the sound, which, common experience tells one, have much to do with its capacity for being heard at a great distance." The points raised in this criticism I have answered in my various discussions of the subject on more than a dozen different occasions in my various writings, which, had Dr. Taylor seen, would have prevented the penning of his reply. He seems at first inclined to deny the truth of the position that according to the wavetheory, the sounding body of the greatest amplitude of swing, and which consequently produces the greatest disturbance of the air should necessarily produce the loudest sound and be heard at the greatest distance. Plainly at first he was tempted, as we judge by reading between the lines, to attack this well-known teaching of the wave-theory, seeing the manifest destruction to that phase of the theory which the widely and powerfully vibrating tuning-fork had wrought, considering its to compress a small fraction of this air and let a "large part" of it "slip off laterally" without being compressed. Prof. Helmholtz, the highest German authority, says: "A periodically oscillating sonorous body produces a similar periodical motion, first in the mass of air and then in the drum of the ear."-Sensations of Tone, p. 16. Now, how can the air-particles in front of "similar periodical mothe prong receive a tion" when a "large part" of them "slips off laterally without oscillating at all? Is there any slipping off laterally of the prong itself? Now hear what Prof. Alfred M. Mayer, the highest American authority says, in his great articles on Sound in "Appleton's Encyclopedia :" 'It is also apparent'that all the characteristics of the periodic motion at the source of the sound will be impressed on the surrounding air, and transmitted through it to a distance." Is it one of the characteristics of the source of the sound-"the oscillating prongs”—to "slip off laterally" and stop vibrating? The doctor apparently stopped short here, accepted the situation, and caught at the only other visible means of saving the theory, Thus all through these authorities it is namely, that the tuning-fork, being so small taught in dozens of places that all the air in a body, permits "a large part of the air in contact with the front of the prong is comcontact with the prongs to slip off laterally pressed into a condensation at each forward from their faces instead of being condensed or movement, and such a desperate resort as this rarefied by their movement!" Of course if slipping-off laterally of a "large part of the this dernier resort of our critics ignominiously air in contact" to account for certain instrushould break down even Dr. Taylor would ad-ments giving forth but little sound, never enmit without hesitation that the wave-theory tered the mind of any writer on acoustics is no longer tenable, especially in the face of till it came up as an offset to the otherwise inthe fact that if there is no slipping off admissi-superable objection to the wave-theory, that ble, then the powerfully vibrating fork, with the prongs of the tuning-fork with their great its consequent powerful condensations of the amplitude of swing and their powerful conair which actually produce almost no audible densations of the air according to theory, sound, must necessarily destroy the theory. "produce absolute silence" ten feet away. Manifestly, as before remarked, this quibble killed, and the whole wave-theory dies with it, as Dr. Taylor evidently sees. We now come to the administration of its death blows. Before taking up the sound-board phase of Dr. Taylor's argument, we refer the reader to the fact that the common little pitch-pipe with a tongue only the eighth of an inch wide and an inch long-not the twentieth the area of a tuning-fork's prong-produces a sound that can be heard half a mile in an open field. Why does not the air slip off laterally from this little brass reed and refuse to be condensed? But before proceeding to answer this slipping-off attempt to escape the force of Dr. Pearce's argument-an attempt by the way, which originated with the distinguished Prof. Stokes, of Cambridge University, and was adopted by Lord Rayleigh-let us carefully examine a few of the highest authorities on the subject in regard to the real function of the tuning-fork in the production and propagation of sound waves. Prof. Tyndall says: "Imagine one of the prongs of the vibrating fork swiftly advancing, it compresses the air immediately in front of it, and when it retreats it leaves a partial vacuum behind, the process being repeated at every subsequent advance and retreat. The whole function of the tuning-fork is to carve the air into these condensations and rarefactions.”—Lectures on Sound, p. 62. Thus the highest English authority declares that the "whole function" of the tuning-fork is to "compress and carve the air" in front of it "into condensations and rarefactions,"-not 66 But I will now give Dr. Taylor an easier case and one of less complication than a pitch-pipe and see how his slipping-off explanation will meet it: A certain species of locust described by Darwin in his "Origin of Species," and which is heard during the summer months all over the American continent, will sit on a green leaf, without even its poor little body serving as a sound-board, and by an almost imperceptible vibration of its thorax will emit squeezed by the sounding body sufficiently to sound-pulses that are heard in the open air give the necessary heat thereby to be generfrom a mile to a mile and a half in all direc- ated, as really as if each cubic inch were comtions. These trifling vibrations, which liberate pressed in a cylinder under the force of a this enormous amount of sound - force, are piston. Why did he not intimate the fraction scarcely perceptible when standing within a of increased density this quantity of heat few inches of the insect, as I have frequently would require to be given to the air? observed; yet this sounding instrument-not a thousandth part the weight of a tuning-fork of the same pitch-will send forth sound-pulses (not air-waves, my dear doctor) that will fill more than four cubic miles of air with audible sound, sending it more than 1,000 times as far as can the most powerfully vibrating fork ever bowed. Why do not the air-particles, so accommodating in the case of the tuning-fork, "slip off laterally" from the polished thorax of this little vibrating instrument and thus be audible only eight or ten feet away, thereby to save the wave-theory from annihilation? Helmholtz, in like manner, in his "Sensations of Tone," steered clear of the problem so essential to the very existence of the wavetheory. So did Lord Rayleigh in his "Theory of Sound." So did Dr. Sedley Taylor in his critical work entitled "Sound and Music." Not one of them ventured to give this essential fact of the wave-theory by which to show its rationality. But our own Prof. Mayer, to his credit be it said, was not afraid of facing the figures. Seeing this missing-link staring the wave-theory in the face, which no other writer on sound had dared to broach, like a brave scientist he No; according to that theory, this little in-flatly gave it to the world in his Encyclopæstrument by its almost infinitesimal mechanical | dia article before referred to, and without seepower actually converts four cubic miles of ing the result of his bravery thus closed down air into "condensations and rarefactions". -as the lid of the coffin upon the wave-theory forthese alone, according to the theory, consti- ever. Here are his words: tute sound-waves-thereby generating suffi"This compression gives for the compressed cient heat, according to Laplace as now uni-half of the wave an increase of to the ordinversally taught, to augment the elasticity of the air one-sixth, and thereby add one-sixth, or 174 feet a second to the velocity of its own sound. ary density of the atmosphere."-Article on "Sound," American Encyclopædia. Now it only requires a beginner in arithmetic to calculate the number of cubic inches in the Yes, the learned Dr. Taylor, as instructor of four cubic miles of air condensed by the meacoustical students in Cambridge University, chanical energy of this insect, according to should know that in thus filling four cubic miles theory, and then to consider that it takes fifof air with its sound this insect must exert teen pounds of mechanical pressure to double mechanically upon this mass of air an actual the density of each cubic inch, and he will at condensing or squeezing force of more than the once demonstrate that the locust in thus inmechanical energy exerted by a million loco-creasing the density of every cubic inch of that motive-engines under full head of steam draw-mass of air over its normal density, must ing trains of cars, if there be one shred of actually exert a squeezing force for about one truth in the wave-theory of sound. Reader, minute at a time, of more than five thousand this astounding proposition I will now pro- million tons! ceed to demonstrate. The real question at once presents itself, how much mechanical pressure must be exerted upon a given mass of air through which a sound-wave is passing, in order to raise its temperature sufficiently to generate the heat required by the wave-theory? Prof. Tyndall did not dare to give this increase of density in the compressed half of the sound-wave, for he well knew that every cubic inch of air required mechanical energy, and if he should name any fraction of the normal density, never so small, it would involve a fatal multiplication for the wave-theory. Laplace did not dare to name the fraction of increased density necessary to the theory, though his formula required every cubic inch of the air filled by a given sound to be mechanically There is no evading these facts and figures. Yet that insect could not produce a quarter of a pennyweight of mechanical pressure upon any object by exerting all its strength upon it. Such, reader, is a mere sample of the prodigious mechanical absurdities with which the wave-theory is loaded from beginning to end. But Dr. Taylor seems to derive consolation from the fact that after the tuning-fork's prong has allowed a great part of the air to "slip off latterly," if its stem should be held against a sound-board, so broad that the air can not slip off to the same degree, its sound is very much louder than before. have shown in the "Problem of Human Life"-my original scientific book in which the wave-theory was for the first time assailed-that writers on sound have always been mistaken concerning the cause of this Plainly, the fifty-fold increase, both of the augmentation of the sound of strings, tuning-intensity and range of the sound from the pine forks, etc., by means of sound-boards. Dr. wood over that from the iron is not caused by Taylor, like his predecessors, has, of course, the pitch or quality of the sound as Dr. Taylor fallen into the same almost inexcusable error. intimates, for in both cases the sound remains Let me first state the law upon this subject as exactly of the same pitch and quality as when laid down by the substantial theory of sound- the fork was held sounding in the fingers. force in a general way, and then prove its Surely Dr. Taylor must know that the pitch truth beyond a doubt by application to the in- has nothing to do with the loudness or range creased loudness caused by touching the stem of sound even according to the wave-theory, of the tuning-fork to a sound-board. This law for the intensity and range both depend upon is, that the volume or intensity of sound the "width of swing of the vibrating air produced by any sounding body, depends en- particles," according to Prof. Tyndall. A tirely upon the sonorous property of such vi- tuning-fork of a high key can be heard no brating body itself, or in other words, upon further than one of a low key, while an Aits inherent quality of liberating this form of fork, of the same pitch exactly as that of our force from the fountain of natural energy, and little locust, produces less than the ʊʊ,00,000 that in no sense does it depend upon the air- of its volume of sound counting the cubical waves or atmospheric disturbance such vi- space they each fill, with perhaps a hundred brating body may send off. This is one of the times greater vibratory effect on the air from fundamental laws of the substantial theory, the fork! the correctness of which will immediately be demonstrated. Who, then, but a substantialist could be expected to give any rational answer to our As positive proof that the increased sound question as to why the fork, with its stem heard by touching the stem of a tuning-fork resting against the piece of wood, should to the sound-board is not caused by the in- produce so much more sound than with its creased air-waves thus sent off from the stem resting against the piece of iron? Here broader surface, let any one of my readers is the answer that any young substantialist in try the following simple and conclusive ex-America would give to this problem without periment: take a very thin dry pine board about six by eight inches, press the stem of the vibrating fork against it, and instantly its sonorous property will so augment the volume of sound as to increase it at least a hundredfold. Now, take a piece of iron of the same dimensions, having very slight sonorous property but which, owing to its less compressibility and greater elasticity, will repeat the vibrations of the fork many times more distinctly and powerfully than will the soft, yielding pine wood, as can be felt by the hand, and This is an unequivocal demonstration that consequently will transfer said vibrations the sound-board augments the sound of the much more energetically to the air than will tuning-fork and of the strings of musical inthe wood, yet it is a fact that almost no per-struments, not by increasing their action on ceptible augmentation of the sound will be the air, but by the liberation of a larger quanproduced from the iron! even stopping to think: The piece of wood, though vibrating less energetically than the piece of iron and producing less action on the air, possesses a superior sonorous property and is the better adapted to the liberation of soundforce from the natural fountain of substantial energy, just as our little locust, with its hundred times less vibration or action on the air, is a million times better liberator of soundforce than the tuning-fork, simply because of its superior sonorous property. tity of sound-force from the surrounding reservoir of natural energy, and consequently the whole wave-theory breaks down right Why is it, ye sages of the wave-theory, that the more energetic vibrations of the iron sound-board under the stem of the fork, with here without another argument against it. their much greater action on the air, do not produce a fiftieth part of the sonorous effect caused by the soft pine sound-board with its less vibrations and its consequently less energetic effect on the air? The wave-theory can give no sort of answer to this question, but stands dumb before the bar of scientific justice with its jaws locked and its tongue tied. But Substantialism, on the contrary, has a quick and ready answer which is in exact accordance with the sonorous law just laid down, as will soon be shown. Will Dr. Taylor squarely meet this argument or else manfully give up the wave theory, since evidently he can conceive of no reply to the trifling sound of the tuning-fork with its powerful action on the air, except this slipping-off and sound-board explanation now summarily taken from him? The eyes of America as well as of England are upon him, and no mere skimming remarks will meet the case. Further, we ask Dr. Taylor now to tell us why a set of magnets on one dynamo-machine |