With the caution which characterized him on other occasions, and which has been referred to admiringly by Faraday,[1] Arago made no attempt to explain this anomaly. His words are: "As for the very notable differences of intensity constantly observed in the sound of the cannon accordingly as it was propagated from north to south between Villejuif and Montlhéry, or from south to north between the latter station and the former, we will not at present try to explain it, as we could present to the reader only conjectures unsupported by evidence."[2]
I have tried, after much perplexity of thought, to bring this subject within the range of experiment, and have now to submit to the Royal Society a possible solution of this enigma. The first step was to ascertain whether the sensitive flame referred to in my recent paper in the "Philosophical Transactions" could be safely employed in experiments on the mutual reversibility of a source of sound and an object on which the sound impinges. Now, the sensitive flame usually employed by me measures from eighteen to twenty-four inches in height, while the reed employed as a source of sound is less than a square quarter of an inch in area. If, therefore, the whole flame or the pipe which fed it were sensitive to sonorous vibrations, strict experiments on reversibility with the reed and flame might be difficult, if not impossible. Hence my desire to learn whether the seat of sensitiveness was so localized in the flame as to render the contemplated interchange of flame and reed permissible.
The flame being placed behind a cardboard screen, the shank of a funnel, passed through a hole in the cardboard, was directed upon the middle of the flame. The sound-waves issuing from the vibrating reed placed within the funnel produced no sensible effect upon the flame. Shifting the funnel so as to direct its shank upon the root of the flame, the action was violent.
To augment the precision of the experiment, the funnel was connected with a glass tube three feet long and half an inch in diameter, the object being to weaken by distance the effect of the waves diffracted round the edge of the funnel, and to permit those only which passed through the glass tube to act upon the flame.
Presenting the end of the tube to the orifice of the burner (b, Fig. 1), or the orifice to the end of the tube, the flame was violently agitated by the sounding-reed, R. On shifting the tube, or the burner, so as to concentrate the sound on a portion of the flame about half an inch above the orifice, the action was nil. Concentrating the sound upon the burner itself about half an inch below its orifice, there was no action.
These experiments demonstrate the localization of "the seat of
