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riment proves, in a very satisfactory manuer, what a delicate faculty the sense of hearing is.-A bolt, driven by a spring against a fixed piece of metal, may be made to produce a succession of strokes of equal force; consequently, the concussion given to the air will also be equal; and will therefore occasion like effects on the same ear, placed at equal distances from the spring, the state of the wind and weather being the same in both cases. I caused an instrument of the preceding description to be struck repeatedly at the distance of 40 feet from my ear, care being taken to place it in the axis of hearing produced after which, it was moved again in the same right line sometimes two feet further from me, and at other times two feet nearer my person; and I could always distinguish the distances varied. The range of the sound, at the distance at which it ceased to be audible, was 240 feet, or six times the interval made use of in the experiment. The sound which I employed was, therefore, of a moderate force; and perhaps the interval was a suitable one, being neither too great nor too small a part of the whole range. It appears then, that a good ear will discover a perceptible difference in the force of two equal sounds, the one of which moves through one sixth part of its whole range, and the other through a space which differs from the distance of the former only the 120th part of the range common to both.

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"The foregoing instance affords a remarkable proof of the ear's accuracy in comparing slight variations of sound and I have reason to believe that the delicacy of my organs, in this respect, surpasses the medium of sensibility for some ears, which were tried in the same manner, did not perceive the effects in question, until the instrument had been removed four feet, or the 6th part of my range. But either instance furnishes a proof sufficient for the present purpose, and shews the human ear to be a very delicate judge of comparative loudness." Manchester Memoirs, Vol. V. Part II. p. 627.

I should inform you, Sir, that Mr. Gough is blind; but need not make a common-place observation on that subject.

The late blind Justice Fielding,"

says Dr. Darwin, "walked for the first time into my room, when he once visited me, and after speaking a few words, said, this room is about 22 feet long, 18 wide, and 12 high; all which he guessed by the ear with great accuracy."

Of the Intensity of Sound in different Fluids, from M. PEROLLE.

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Exp. VI. I closed all the joints of my watch with soft wax, and then suspended it by a silk thread. In this state I hung it by an iron branch placed in the wall, so that the watch remained suspended in the middle of a glass vessel, five inches in diameter, and seven inches high, taking care that neither the watch nor the thread touched the vessel in any part. I remarked the kind of sound afforded by the watch, and the distance at which I ceased to hear it: after having marked this point, I then filled the vessel with water, into which I again suffered the watch to descend with the same precaution, of not suffering it or the thread to touch the vessel.

"The tone (timbre, quality of tone) was changed in the watch in a striking manner. The sound was propa

gated in so lively a manner that the glass, and a small table of wood, on which it stood, at a distance from the wall, seemed to undergo direct percussions from a solid body. But that which appeared the most astonishing was, that in the midst of all these agitations, the fluid, in which the watch was plunged, was perfectly tranquil, and its surface not in the slightest degree agitated.

"By substituting different liquids in the place of water, I had results in general analogous to those I had obtained with that fluid; but each of them gave a different modification to the sound, of which the intensity was noted as follows:

"Intensity of Sound observed in different fluids.

1. In air, serving as the term
of comparison, it ceased
to be heard at the dis-
tance of

2. In water, as that of
3. Oil-olive

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8 feet.

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4. Oil of Turpentine 5. Spirit of Wine..... 21 "It is proper to observe, that in repeating these trials I observed some variations in the intensity, which ap

peared

peared to depend on the organ of sense, or accidental noises.

"From the experiments made upon liquid's it follows:

1. That these, as well as solids, do transmit sounds much better than the air, and that even the fat oils are not to be excepted.

2. That each fluid, upon trial, is found to modify the sound in a peculiar manner.

3. Philosophers maintain the opinion that sound is propagated in the air by means of certain motions or undulations, which the transparence of that fluid prevents our seeing. My experiments with fluids which do not elude the sight, and in which no motion was perceived, notwithstanding the very effectual transinission of sound, may render this in some respect doubtful."

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The strength of sounds is greatest in cold and dense air, and least in that which is warm and rarified. Divers, at the bottom of the sea," says Derham, "can hear noises made above ouly confusedly: but, on the contrary, those above cannot hear the divers below. Of which an experiment was made that had like to have been mortal; one of the divers blew an horu in his diving bell, at the bottom of the sea, the sound whereof, in that compressed air, was so very loud and irksome, that it stunned the diver, and made him so giddy that he had liked to have dropped out of his bell and been drowned." The sound of a bell under water is much duiler and not so loud; and it is a 4th deeper.

Of the Decay of Sound. "The principal cause of the decay of sound is the want of perfect elasticity in the air; whence it arises that the entire motion of every subsequent particle has not the entire motion of the preceding particle communicated to it, as in the case of equal and perfectly elastic bodies; consequently the farther the motion is propagated, the more will the velocity, with which the particles move, be diminished: the condensation of air will be diminished also; and the farther the pulse is propagated the more is the density, and consequently the impulse on the drum of the ear diminished."

Of sonorous Cavities, from Dr.
YOUNG.

Mr. de la Grange has demonstrated, that all impressions are reflected by

an obstacle terminating an elastic fluid, with the same velocity with which they arrived at that obstacle. When the walls of a passage, or of an unfurnished room, are smooth, and perfectly parallel, any explosion, or stamping with the foot, communicates an impression on the air, which is reflected from one wall to the other, and from the second again towards the ear, nearly in the same direction with the primitive impulse: this takes place as frequently in a second, as twice the breadth of the passage is contained in 11,300 feet; and the ear receives a perception of sound, thus determined in its pitch by the breadth of the passage. On making the experiment the result will be found accurately to agree with this explanation. The appropriate notes of a room may readily be discovered by singing the scale in it; and they will be found to depend on the proportion of its length or breadth to 11,300 feet. The sound of the stopped diapason is produced in a manner somewhat similar to the note from an explosion in a passage; and that of its reed pipes to the resonance of the voice in a room: the length of the reed in one case determining the sound, in the other, increasing its strength. The frequency of the vibrations does not at all immediately depend on the diameter of the pipe. Of reverberated Sounds, from Dr. YOUNG.

"Sound, like light, after it has been reflected from several places, may be collected in one point, as into a focus; and it will be there more audible than in any other part, even than at the place from whence it proceeded. On this principle it is that a whispering gallery is constructed.

"The form of the gallery must be that of a concave hemisphere, as ABC; and if a low sound or whisper be uttered at A, the vibrations expanding themselves every way, will, impinge on the points D D D, and from thence be reflected to E E E, and from thence to the points F and G, till at last they meet in C; where, as we have said before, the sound will be most distinctly heard.

"An echo is a reflection of sound striking against some object, as an image is reflected in a glass. — We have heard of a very extraordinary echo, at a ruined fortress near Lovain,

in Flanders. If a person sung, he only heard his voice, without any repetition on the contrary, those who stood at some distance, heard the echo, but not the voice; but then they heard sometimes louder, sometimes softer, now more near, now more distant. There is an account in the Memoirs of the French Academy of a similar echo near Rouen."

Our friend Mr. Vaughan, that beautiful singer, told me, that the first time he sung in the chapel at Eton, he was much astonished and terrified. He was bred up in a cathedral not remarkable for resonance. When he was singing in Eton Chapel, he fancied some oue was singing after him at the other end of the chapel. If he had had time for reflection, and his modesty had not prevented the observation, he might have well been aware of the improbability of so beautiful a voice being prepared to form an echo. The echo was faithful; and the echo had not often been put to such a test.

I must not finish the subject of reverberated sounds, without quoting a curious and very interesting experiment of M. Guy Lussac.

Trumpet sounded in an Air Balloon. Mr. Guy Lussac, in 1803, ascended in an air-balloon, and found that the voice, through a speaking-trumpet, was re-echoed most perfectly from the earth, even at the greatest elevation; and the time of the return of the echo so well coincided with their height, increasing in quickness as the latter diminished, that it is proposed as a means by which aëronauts may be enabled to judge of the elevation in future. Each time they spoke through the trumpet a siight undulation of the balloon was perceptible; and they found the return of the echo to take up ten seconds, when the barometer was at the elevation of 27 inches from this the narrator calculates, that they were 5195 French feet from the earth; but that, as it is probable, the progress of sound, perpendicularly, has not the same law as to its velocity in an horizontal direction, he thinks this calculation may not be very exact; and proposes to ascertain the movement of sound by firing cannon every thirty seconds during the ascent of a balloon, and observing the instant of hearing each

discharge with a stop watch, in the balloon, which, when compared with the same time noted below, would, in their difference, furnish means to ascertain this fact.

But I must not detain you any longer, at present, from attending your pupils, and that assiduous practice on the Piano Forte, without which no one can become a really fine player. C. J. S.

Description of ELTHAM, continued from page 14.

THE North side is much the same

as the corresponding one, excepting the Oriel. In this, the windows of the front are not in the centre, owing to a staircase introduced into the Western pier; being the widest, a small square-headed window admitted light to it, and is to be seen on the outside. This staircase was undoubtedly for a room, as it has no communication whatever with the Hall, and is not to be seen in the inside. The interior of this oriel is entirely perfect, excepting the bosses and groins, which are very much defaced; unlike those in the South, where the leaves and figures of the bosses, and the mouldings of the groins, are as perfect as if just carved. It is boarded up for the convenience of a barn. The cornice on this side above the windows is entirely perfect (not a stone wanting), with the grotesque heads left. The principal entrance to the palace being on the North side, the cornice was ornamented with grotesque heads, as it was more seen than the South, which has none. The buttresses are very perfect, and, with the exception of the battlements, as whole as when first built (those on the South side are very much defaced). The walls are brick, and cased with very fine stone; but the buildings that attached themselves to it appear to have been solid stone, by the fragments that are left.

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The Hall is now let to a farmer, and used for the housing and threshing of coru; one of the gorgeous oriels cut away (as before observed), to admit of waggons, carts, and such like abuses; and the windows patched up with brickwork, with loopholes left to admit air and light: the floor has been raised above a foot for convenience. Under the splays of the windows have been made holes in the walls, and corresponding ones also in the West wall, by which a floor was probably intended to have been carried across, but the want of light in the lower story may have prevented it. C. B.

only support the wall but these arches. Out of the cornice projects a beam, about seven feet, with the same mouldings, from which hang very elegant pendentives; and out of those spring small arches, resting on ornamented stone brackets, as high as the springing of the arches of the windows. The spandrels, formed by these arches against the wall,.are occupied by the curious intersection of the mouldings of the large arches. Out of these pendentives rise small slender perpendicular shafts, up to the large rafters over the arches; their height is divided about midway by a band moulding, and they have a base: they were originally ornamented with small pinnacles. At the top of these shafts a beam goes across, which is cut into mouldings, and under them are the principal arches of the roof. The space formed by the shafts and the slope of the roof is an acute angle; in this is another portion of the large arches, the mouldings of which intersect with the principal arches of the roof, at the inside of the shafts, and rise together in the cross beam. Between this and the ridge of the roof, is another smaller beam, cut into mouldings; the spaces are filled in with open compartments; the lower into nine, and the upper into five, the heads of which are richly ornamented with perforated tracery work. The space left between each of the arches in the slope of the roof is occupied by three divisions, separated by clusters of mouldings; the middle division, being larger than either of the others, is filled with ogee arches, and the smaller ones with half arches. The spandrels are raftered. In the centre of this roof was originally (as in most other Halls in the kingdom) a lantern, to give light in the centre of the room. It was in the form of a hexagon; the framework of it is left, but the roof covered in. At the East end of the Hall is the musicgallery, which has been very much defaced; it was entirely perfect when the battlements adorned the exterior parapet, and appears to have been a very magnificent gallery by the clusters of delicate columns that are left which support it. On the North side, under the gallery, is a very perfect square-headed doorway, under which is a flat-pointed arch; the spandrels of it are ornamented with roses, and as perfect as if just carved.

Mr. URBAN,

Bath, Jun. 3. page 4, is right in supposing YOUR Correspondent who signs

that Ravenheld was the seat of the Westbys at a very early period; and he may also be correct in his statement, that the inscription of which he has sent a copy, is now the only memorial remaining of the family. But, when I was at Ravenfield in July 1803, there was lying in the churchyard a large and thick flag-stone, which had formerly covered the remains of one of this family. clerk said that it lay within the church, meaning the old church which was taken down some years ago, when the present neat and handsome structure was erected on the site. The person commemorated upon this stone

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was Anne, wife of Thomas Westby, of Firsby, esq. She was a daughter of Gabriel Bonner, of Allemondbury, co. Hunt. and was married to Mr. Westby in 1630.

On the monument are the arms of Westby impaling Drake; the lady, who erected it to the memory of her husband, being a daughter of Mr. Joseph Drake, of Hull, merchant. Of the children mentioned in the inscription, Ann, the elder daughter, married William Cotton, of the Haigh in the West-Riding of the county of York, a liberal friend and patron of the Nonconformists in the reign of Charles II.; as was also Mr. Thomas Westby the son, who resided many years at his paternal mansion. This gentleman had three wives; one of them was sister to Thomas White, of Tuxford and Wallingwells, esq. clerk of the Ordnance; by her he had no issue: but by another wife, who was a Wardel of Holderness, and not im

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The lady Mr. W. G. Westby married was a sister of Robert, the third Earl of Holderness; it is the tradition of the village that her extravagance brought ruin upon her husband. He was indebted to the friendly interference of the Duke of Norfolk for a small place in the Customs, on the emoluments of which he barely subsisted till his death. He is said to have retained the attachment to the principles of Nonconformity which distinguished his father; and to have been a regular attendant for many years upon the ministry of the late learned Dr. Chandler.

His only daughter married an adventurer, who deserted her soon after the marriage. Let the remainder of her unhappy story be left in oblivion !

But though it be true as your Correspondent has observed, that the Westbys resided many years at Ravenfield, yet were not the Westbys, of whom we have now been speaking, lineally descended from the old family of that name; who, according to some pedigrees, possessed Ravenfield as early as the 18th century. Whoever wishes for information on this family, may consult No. 4630 of the Harl. MSS. p. 698, where they will find a regular connected pedigree of eleven descents, but in many parts of very doubtful authority. Thomas Westby, the last of this family, was buried in the church of Ravenfield in 1633. Whether it passed to him by will, or was acquired by purchase, I am uncertain; but the next possessor of this fine estate was Mr. George Westby, who had also considerable property in the parish of Rotherham. This gentleman was son to George Westby of Whalley, son to Christopher Westby of Elmton-ball in the county of Derby, whose descent, if he really were descended of them, from the antient family of Westbys, possessors of Ravenfield, has never been regularly registered. As one proof that they have not pretended to any such

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descent, it may be mentioned that the quarterings, accumulated by the first race of the Westbys, were never used by the second. This George Westby, by Frances Borough his wife who was related to the Snells, one of which family was a Protestant martyr in the days of Queen Mary, had two sons: the elder, Thomas, settled at Ravenfieid; he has been already mentioned; the younger, George, at Gilthwaite in the parish of Rotherham. Mrs. Elizabeth Westby, of Howarth-hall, is great-grand daughter to this gentleman, and the last survivor of this most respectable family.

Their arms are, Argent on a chevron Azure 3 cinquefoils of the field.

I hope these particulars of a family of some note in the West Riding of Yorkshire will not be unacceptable, to accompany the inscription which appeared in your last number; and may, as they have not found their way into any printed genealogicał work, gratify some of your numerous Readers. JOSEPH HUNTER. *Mr. H's former letter was received.

Mr. URBAN,

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Jan. 29. HE observations on the unanimous verdict of a Jury, Vol. LXXXI. Part ii. p. 319, are so just, that I think they never can be answered. The jury are sworn to give a true verdict according to the evidence; some of them may very conscientiously think that, according to the evidence, they ought to find a verdict one way, the others may as conscientiously think differently. Let the majority decide, and every man keeps his conscience. If an unanimous verdict must be brought in, which of the different opinions is to govern? Every one who has been in a Court of Justice knows, that the minority give up to the majority; the majority do in fact bring in the verdict. A very recent instance has shewn the consequence of unanimity being required, where a man's conscience (or, if you say obstinacy, it will rather strengthen my position) prevented unanimity, and no verdict at all was given. I understand that in such cases in Scotland as come before a jury, the majority find the verdict-what ill consequences have followed? Your Correspondent, Sir Richard Phillips, means well, but argues ill-very ill.

X.

Mr.

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