The Newtown bee., 1880-02-25
Moving the Ears.

The power of moving the ears is usually absent in man, and it has been supposed that as man advanced in civil ization, the power of moving the ears gradually became less and less until it was lost. Sometimes, however, per- sons are met with who can still volun- tarily move their ears. It is narrated of Albinus, who was professor of medi- cine in the university of Leyden about the middle ofthe last century that he was in the habit of removing his wig in order to demonstrate to his class the power he possessed of moving his auri- cles at will. The power which many animals have in directing their ears toward the supposed source of sound, or of erecting them in. an act of attention, is familiar to every one. To many animals the external ear no doubt acts as kind of artificial hearing trum- pet, so that ordinary sounds may be augmented and faint sounds rendered audible. The auricle is small in moles, seals and walruses, but it is largely de- veloped in some bats and in the African elephant. The ears of the mouse and the hedgehog are delicate organs of touch. In birds, the auricle is wanting. It is remarkable, however, that in nocturnal birds, su h as many owls, the feathers can be elevated around the car opening so as to form kind of external ear. In some aquatic mammals, such as in cer- tain seals, the sea otter, etc, the open ing of the ear is merely slit. It would seem, speaking gen nerally, that fully formed auricle is found only in man. mals whose habits are terrestrial, anG that it is reduced in size, or, it may be, is absent in mammals living under ground or in water. It was once sup posed that it had no function in man, and it was stated that those who had lost the external ears from accident or injury did not appear to suffer any diminution in the power of hearing. Recently, however, it has been shown more especially by Dr. Burnett, of Phil adelphia, that the external ear instead of being useless, has an important in | fluence in the perception of a quality of tone, and that it acts a a kind of re- senator, lengthening the external audi  tory canal, so as to make certain tones more audible than they would other wise be. It is well known that nearly every sound consists of a number oi partial tones, and th at the numbeE and intensity of these give to our conscious ness the "color," timb er," or "klang' of that particular sound. These tones are of different pitch-some high, others low. Burnett has found that the pc. culiar form of the external cal strengthens t!.e higher partial tones By holding the hand behind or around the ear, we have the power of adding Z still deeper column of air and it's reso nance to that of the external ear. Hence the deaf person involuntarily places hi hand to his ear to increase by resonance the ordinary sound falling upon it. Hi
 hearing is thus strengthened, especially
 for those tones of high pitch and short
 wave length to which the human voice owes it's peculiar timber or klangtint
 Helmhollz has already observed in hi
 great work on sensations of tone ;
 '" It is, indeed, remarkable that the hu
 man voice should be so rich in over
 tones for which the human ear is s'
 sensitive. ."-Good Words.