SCIENCE SIFITINGS

New Zealand Tablet, 20 February 1919, Page 46

SCIENCE SIFITINGS

By “Volt.”

Ingredients of Soap, White soaps are usually made of olive oil, cottonseed oil, or other fine vegetable oils and carbonate of soda. Common household soaps are usually made of soda and tallow, and yellow soap is generally composed of tallow, resin, and soda, to which palm oil is added in some cases. Marine soap, or "sea soap," which will lather and dissolve in sea water, as well as in fresh water, is usually made of cocoanut oil, soda, and water. Soft soaps are made with potash instead of soda and with whale oil, seal oil, or the oils of linseed, rape seed, hemp seed, or cotton seed with the addition of a little tallow.

The Speaking Voice. Of all the guides that lead to the soul perhaps the surest and most delicate, for the thoughtful observer, is the voice (comments a writer in Farm, Field, and Fireside). To be sure, it is an elusive guide and a misleading; its indications have to be watched with care and interpreted with discretion; but so treated, they are less likely to be misleading than any others. Men and women can too easily deceive us by the words they use, as by their smiles and by their gestures. Long practice makes it possible to convey by the expression of the face something very 'different from what is intended by the heart. But the significance of the voice, the subtle suggestion of its tones and shadings, is hard to alter and hard to conceal. It is curious how little scientific investigation has been made of this fascinating subject. Students like Darwin and Mantegazza and their followers have analysed facial expression most elaborately in its causes and development. They have traced the bearing of laughter and tears upon the deeper movements and forces of life. Also, the voice has been minutely analysed in its physical organisation. All its modulations and inflections in the formation of speech sounds have been tabulated, and the science of phonetics has assumed an important part in the study and the acquisition of languages. But the subtle shifts and variations of tone and emphasis, the exquisite, fine shadings of utterance that differ so widely with nations and climates and localities and individuals, the infinite possibilites of suggesting different feelings in speaking the very same —those things have hardly been studied so carefully as they might be, because the study of them is so exceedingly difficult. Even the great novelists, who are the keenest observers in "all such matters, succeed but imperfectly in rendering the fine shades we refer to. Yet a common ear will detect them without any analysis, and a common heart will be stirred by them to the profoundest emotion. We have said that it is hard to alter the significance of the voice. So it is on special occasions and for an immediate purpose. But although it be hard, it is not impossible to cultivate our voices for the purposes and the habits of common speech. We can subdue their harshness, increase their variety, enrich them, chasten them, purify them. If we observe those whose voices we admire, live with them, notice what it is we admire in them, we shall be able to catch something of their grace and sweetness in our own utterance. But, ' after all, the wonder of voices is that the voice and the soul are so closely connected. And if we wish our speech to be charming, the best way to accomplish it is to strive to have something charming in our souls. -