Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1876-04-19

American War ofIndependence- English
and American troops were drawn up on
opposite sides of river; the outposts
were mutually visible; and the English
could see an American drummer beating
his tattoo, although no sound could be
heard. This is attributed. to a kind Of
homeopathy which affected the air over
the river in particular state Of tempera-
ture and humidity. 0t6
There is to most of us much mystery In
sounds when louder than We expected to
find them. "A well at Carisbrooke Castle,
Isle of Wight, has water at the bottom
and when even SO small an object rs g pin
is dropped into the water the sound can
be heard above, although the weil'is more
than 200 feet deep. AT 81. Alban's Cathe-
| dral, it used to be said, the tick OF a watch
could be heard from end to end OF that
very long building; whether the recent
reservations have interfered with this
phenomenon we do not know Sound
can be heard over water at greater dis
lance than over land; Dr. Hutton heard
a person reading at 140 feet dis
lance on the Thames, whereas he
could only hear him seventy feet off on
shore. Sound can be heard over ice,
also, more easily than over land. When
Lieut.. Foster was wintering in the Arctic
regions, Ne found he could converse with
a man mile and quarter distant, both
being on the ice in Bowen Harbor. The
human voice, it isasserted, has been heard
ten miles off at GiDraltar-we presume,
over the water of the strait. The whis-
pering gallery at st. Paul's is always q
mystery to visitors; whisper becomes
distinctly audible at the opposite side of
the gallery, but not at intermediate posi-
tons. The late Sir Charles Wheatstone
once made acurious observation on sound
at the Colosseum in the Regents Park
(recently pulled down.. Placing himself
close to the upper part of the interior wall
"a circle $50 feet in diameter) he found
that spoken word was repeated many
times, that an exclamation appeared like
a peal of laughter, and that the tearing of
piece of paper was like the pattering of
hail. In the cathedral of Girgenti, Sicily,
a whisper can be heard the whole length
Of the building if the whisperer places
himself in the focus of the semicircular
apse at one end. A story is told that,
long ago, confessional box was mad
vertenty placed just at that spot, that the
details of a confession were audible at
another spot near the entrance to the
church, and that the authorities were first
made acquainted with this awkward fact
by ferment arising out of one particular
confession
Single sounds repeated many times, and
a whole sentence repeated after second
or two, are alike mysterious to those who
are not conversant with the scientific con
ditions on which they depend. Some
recorded echoes are of very remarkable
character. Those on or near the Lakes
of Killarney are doubtless familiar to
many readers of this sheet. AT Wood
stock Park, near Oxford, it used to, be
said that an echo would repeat seventeen
syllables by day and twenty by nights
statement possibly in need of modern YER
itication. An echo on the banks of the
Lago del Lupo, near Terni, is said Il TO re-
peat seventeen syllables; while the old
topographers of Sussex told of an echo
of twcnty-one sylables in Shipley Church.
Many mysterious rumbling, a trem-
bling ii not booming, has been fairly
attributed to distant cannonading heard
over wide stretches of sea and sometimes
Of land. Surprising the statements to be
correct (Which, of course, we cannot guar
antee), many of the recorded examples
are notable enough. The evening gun at
Plymouth has been heard at lltracome,
sixty miles off. Rather more than this
is the distance from Holyhead to Kings
town, near Dublin, distance travelled
by the audible sound of salute from
fleet of war-ships. Cannonadisg off the
coast of Essex has been heard at Cam
bridge; and off the North Foreland, at
London-distances of seventy or eighty
miles. The booming of great guns has
been heard from Messina to Syracuse,
from Genoa to Leghorn, from Portsmouth
to Hereford-distances of ninety to hun
dred miles. Great explosions of gunpow-
der in pewder-works and in magazines
are said to have been heard at distances
nearly as great as these. Guns fired at
Carlscrona have been heard in Denmark,
across the whole breadth of Sweden, 100
miles off. AT two or three places on the
coast of Kent, il is said, the cannonading
at Waterloo was heard-th distance be-
ing very considerably ever 100 miles.
The terrible firing of the Federals and
Contederates at the battle of Getty sburg,
during the American civil war, made it.
self heard 100 miles off; and it is even
said that gun-tiring at Stockholm was
once heard at distance of 1870 miles !;
and that cannonading in the German
Ocean was audible at Shrewsbury, 300
miles off But if for cannonading we
substitute the mightiest sounds of nature,
great volcanic eruptions. we leave such
distances far behind Sir Stamford Raj
fles and other reliable authorities tell us
that the tremendous volanic eruption at
Sumbawa Island, in The Eastern Archipel-
ago. was heard 600 miles away.
There is often something very mysteri-
Gus in sounds when we are deceived as to
the direction whence they come, even
when the sounds themselves are OF a
familiar kind; and if we are deceived
both as to direction and distance, the mys-