Music-Pictures.

It has long been known that the vibrations of a musical note will disperse loose particles of sand, &c, on a sounding-board in regular and symmetrical forms. Recent experiments in this direction have led to beautiful results, which are described by Mr Rowbotham, in Cassell's Family Magazine. He says: — A lady—Mrs Watts-Hughes, who originally intended to devote herself to the art professionally, through ill-health renounced a public career, and undertook instead delicate investigations into the nature of sound. The experiments are conducted as follows: A hollow receiver is procured, over the mouth of which is stretched an elastic membrane. The suface of the membrane is covered with a semi-fluid paste, of such consistency that very light impressions can be easily received. The singer, then approaching the apparatus, sings on the surface of the membrane, exercising proper care that his notes are perfectly steady and accurate in the intonation of the given sound. At once the musical note mirrors itself on the paste, and in the most unexpected forms. The forms of flowers, as perfect as if they were drawn, occur among the rest, and indeed contribute the majority of figures. Daisies, with every petal exactly shaped, are common; lilies as symmetrically made are not rare. A change of note or of timbre will produce a miniature tree on the paste. By some slight variation, impossible to estimate, the figure of a star-fish will appear on the surface of the membrane; another imperceptible difference will lay side-by-side with the star-fish an anemone. Occasionally the vibrations—presumably owing to an unconscious augmentation of force on the part of the singer—will imprint themselves in the form of shells beautifully voluted, the wrinkles in the scroll being so incisively indented that when photographed they appear as if creases in the picture. Suddenly deserting these marine forms, as capriciously, apparently, as it took them up, the sound will create ferns, suspend bunches of fruit, and otherwise adorn with similar emblems the surface. When the sound is producing flowers on the paste, the singer can at pleasure increase the number of petals by making the tone ascend. At each fraction of a tone on which his voice rises, a new petal is added to the flower. He can thus, by a careful management of his voice, increase a pigmy daisy, that lies first imprinted on the paste, to a gigantic sunflower, occupying nearly the whole surface. In the other forms— e.g., the shells—this addition of piece by piece does not appear, and the scroll once fashioned remains. The forms thus produced have been photographed while the membrane is in sonorous vibration; or water-color impressions are taken, which are transferred to glass immediately after being produced. The advantage of the latter method is that the minute beauty and delicacy of the forms can be shown to perfection by the use of various colors for different parts of the same object. » Here is one more example of the infinite harmonies and correspondences in nature. The continued reappearance of precisely similar forms, under entirely different conditions, is a problem which has never been faced by the ultra-evolutionists, who, after all, are not basing their theories on substances, but on outside forms. Mankind may yet revert after all, to some form of the primitive philosophy, and find in all forms of life, in nature's three kingdoms, the outward expression of « The Music of the Spheres. »