MUSICAL STONES.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3184, 12 September 1881, Page 4

MUSICAL STONES.

Pausamas fcells of a atone that was placed afc the entrance of a treasury, and scared robbers by the trumpet notes it sent, forth, i≤ ov oral stones have this property of resonance, and it is probable that a stone of this description was so suspended as to be struck by a projecting piece of metal, when the external door of the treasury was opened. Strong boxes and safes have been fancifully constructed to emit sounds, to alarm their owners, when opened surreptitiously. Salverte relates that Louis XV. possessed one of these, and that Napoleon T. vraa offered one in "Vienna in 1809. The clink stone indicatos by its name its sonorous qualitios. The red granite of the Thebaid in Egypt possesses similar properties. Most of the obelisks were made of this. So musical are the rocks on the banks of the Orinoco, visited by Humboldt, that their sounds are ascribed to witchcraft by the natives. In Brazil are large blocks of basalt which emitted clear sounds when struck ; and tho Chinese employ this stone in the fabrication of musical instruments. Some years since, an artisan of Keswiok exhibited a rock harmonicon composed of slabs of stone, placed at certain distances apart, upon which several pieces of mini • were performed. At the Crystal Palaae just recently, there was a performance on musical stones (Welsh). The most celebrated of these acoustic wonders is the ' Jabel Nakous, , or Mountain of the ell, a low sandy hill in the peninsula of Mount Sinai, in Arabia Petrea, which gives sounds varying in power from that of a humming top to thunder. The late Hugh Miller, when in the island of Eigg (Hebrides), observed a musical sound while walking on the dry while sand of the beach. As two plates of silex or quartz (which are but crystals of sand) give out a musical sound when struok togethor the collision of two minute crystals of sand does the same in however inferior a degree, and the union of all these sounds, though eingly imperceptible, may constitute the musical note, the Mountain of the Bell, or the lesser sound of the trodden sea beach of Eigg. The sands near St. Lunaire, Cotes dn Nord, give a faint musioal sound at certain tides. In a cavern at Cheddar, Somerset, are some stalactites, in the form of folds of drapery, which give forth musioal sounds when struck. A chime of bells can be imitated upon them. Sir A. Smith distinctly hoard sounds issuing from the historic statue of Memnon, and many inscriptions of ancient date are to the sain ■ effect, notably one on the left leg, of which the following is a translation! 'I, P. Balbinus, have heard the divine voioe of the statute of Memnon, &o, &o.' 'I was in the company of the amiable Q,ueen Sabina (wife of Hadrian), the sun was in the first hour of its course, in the 15th year of the reign of Hadrian. , It was not till the time of Nero that this statue had any musical reputation. It hae been supposed that it was shaken in an earthquake in the 27th year before Christ, and that the granite full of cracks may, under certain atmospheric changes, liave given forth sounds. Some say that the action of the rising sun upon the cracks in the stone, moist with dew, caused the peculiar sound produced. Certainly since the repairs were made in the time of Septimus Severus, the sounds have been rarely heard. Some think the sounds were contrived by the priests, because a stone still exists in the lap of the statue, with a recess out in the block immediately behind it, in which a person could be completely concealed j and because while important p rsonnges like the Emperor Hadrian sometimes heard as many as three Tlttei'ances of sound, ordinary mortals sometimes only heard one sound after repeated visits. Mr Postlethwaite describes the'ear of Dionysius' as an opening in a rock in the form of the ear of an ass, 50 feet in height-, loading into a cavern 60 or 70 yards long, cut in the solid rock, the sides slanting till they rose, terminating m a mere rib or riband at the top. From the palace of Dionysius (the tyrant of Syraouse) a passage led to the top of the cavern. Here he is said to have shut up his subjects, and overheard their soliloquies and ejaculations. The eavesdropper was 60 feet off ; but Captain Smyth, in his scientific explanation, says that ' the cavern was in the shape of a parabolic ourve, ending in an eliptical arch, with sides parallel of its axis, and perfectly smooth, and covered with slight stahictitic incrustation that rendered its repercussion exceedingly sonorous.'-—Oracle.