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Degree 4.-Vowel é. The Swedish long é, as Carlén, from the best information I have, would appear to be correctly described as this vowel. Dr. Thomas's description of it (Webster's Dictionary, new ed., p. 1634) as "a sound resembling that of short i prolonged," would bring it very near to this.

IX. THE VOWELS.-The most advanced group in the scale of palato-lingual position. The borders of the tongue are applied to the palate, not indeed clear to the tip as for the consonant s, but as far forward as can be, seeing the place of articulation is a vowel-tube reaching from the throat, instead of simply a point as it is for the consonant. It is also to be observed that the middle and back part of the tongue is raised to a position somewhat like that for the u vowels, and with a similar, or even greater, arching up of the soft-palate.

I give this as the precise arrangement which brings out the sound most distinctly and most naturally. But, in all the anterior groups, as before remarked, owing to the extensile structure of the tongue, the articulation may have a determinate and nearly invariable place upon the palate, and yet reach to a variable point on the tongue. Thus, in this case, the tongue may be thrust forward, with the tip and fore part depressed behind the lower teeth; the terminus of the vowel-tube falling further back, of course. The variation is the same as may occur in the so-called dental consonants, t, n, d, which are properly made with the tip of the tongue, but can be uttered by using a part of the tongue considerably further back.

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The peculiar shape of the palatal arch, as it converges forward and gives to the passage a rounded form, would seem to bear an essential part in producing the vowels of this group. If they can be imperfectly imitated at a place further back on the palate, it is done only by so shaping the tongue as to make a somewhat similar converging and rounded passage.

Degree 1.-Vowel i1. Machine, field, eat, &c., and the long e, and ee, as eve, meter, deep, &c.; the long i on the continent, as (Fr.) avis, lire, amie, and (Ger.) Mine, mir, wider.

Vowel . The long u of the French, as ruse, grue, and long of the German, as über, Schüler. As commonly uttered, it might, if without the labial modification, form a somewhat impure, made such by some admixture of a consonantal y. This vowel probably nowhere exists as developed from an original u vowel.

Degree 2.-Vowel is. The so-called short i of the French, as ami, fidèle, vif, and of the German, as mit, bitten, nicht. In English, may be heard in vehement, vehicle, divine, mitigate,

"So represented in the diagram in Max Müller's Lectures, second series, p. 134, which is also more seriously at fault in placing the point of approximation quite too far back upon the palate.

&c. and, in mandarin, capuchin, chlorid, &c., is preferable to the closer sound. It makes the usual vanish of "long a" in name, praise, &c., the whole being commonly e2 +e1+i; also, the final element of "long i," ice (ö1+ö3+i3), and of oi, oy, as toil, boy (a2+i3).

Vowel 2. The shorter French u, as une, rude, ruban, perhaps a little more open in butte, russe, &c.; and the shorter German ü, as Glück, wünschen, Mütter. We have in this-and not in the simple 2 or --the initial part of the English long u, as union, use, tube, mute, and of you in youth, you, &c., and eau in beauty. Between this and the main and final element, there is a distinct consonantal y. So that the long u is i22+y+ u. I propound this, with deference of course to the "Autocrat," -as the secret of how to pronounce the word view.

Degree 3.-Vowel i3. The "short i" in pin, hit, give, &c. The shortest French i may sometimes approach this, as in petite, risque, ville, and the German in bitten, ist; but are hardly, we think, to be ranked here.

Degree 4.- Vowel i. Heard in an improper prolongation of our short i (i3), sometimes as a faulty general habit, and sometimes used in the way of emphasis; properly, the short vowels admit only the emphasis of force or stress, and the syllable should be prolonged, if it all, only on the consonant. The rustic New England do, rude, smooth, &c., sometimes takes this for the initial element.

Having thus completed the analysis of the simple vowel elements, I will suggest an experiment by which I am willing to abide as a test of the correctness of my theory. It is easy to observe, in the first place, that i3 (it, kin) is more open than i1 (eat, keen); or e3 (ell, pen) than e1 (ale, pane); and, in general, that the so-called short are more open than the corresponding long under the several groups,-which, indeed, has not been unrecognized as a fact by orthoëpists (as see Princ. of Pron., Notes to $82, 8, 11, 16, 25, 31). This point being settled, if then we articulate the series of close vowels in order from front to rear, viz., 1 (eve), é1 (aimé), e' (fate), ä1 (their, Mädchen), ö (König, jeûne), ull (ooze), oil (oak), ail (awe), a' (past), we shall find the position of the organs such that, if we suppose a wedge inserted between tongue and palate, it would enter further and further with each successive vowel, being stopped at each point by the front terminus of the palato-lingual passage. We have only to use a thin rod, or even a finger, to perceive this. Observe that, at the point of the wedge supposed inserted, there will be constantly found a close position: showing that the vowel station is simply carried back, and that the difference is not one of merely open and close. The same thing may be

done with the series of open vowels is, é3, &c. (pin, Ger. denn, end, cat, but, willful, not, nor, Fr. bas or Eng. balm),—and the same fact of the regress of the vowel station will be observed. Experiments of this sort, fairly made, seem to me to furnish complete demonstration of the leading principles on which I insist. Further proof will appear in the sequel.

If, on the other hand, we try to arrange all the vowels in a single series on any principle whatever, we find ourselves utterly baffled. If we distinguish them as simply more and less open or close, we find confusion instead of order. Nor should these terms open and close be applied otherwise than as I have done. It is true they might not unaptly be used to describe the difference as the vowel station moves back toward the throat or forward from it,-even as they might describe the corolla of a flower unfolded down toward the base or only near the tip,but the terms are wanted to indicate the width of the expansion, and must therefore not be used for the depth. Neither is the confusion escaped by setting the labials in a class by themselves, arranged according to the extent of the labial opening: the labials cannot be all so discriminated, if we include all in actual use, while for the non-labials the difficulty still holds. Nor will any other subdivision answer, which falls short of the group. ings, or substantially such, as in the scheme here presented. [To be continued.]

ART. XXVI.-On Photo-micrography with the highest powers, as practised in the Army Medical Museum; by J. J. WOODWARD, M.D., Asst. Surgeon and Brevet Major U. S. Army, in charge of the Record and Pension Division Surgeon General's Office, and of the Medical Section Army Medical Museum.

PHOTOGRAPHY had but just begun to attract attention when the attempt was made by Donné to reproduce microscopic objects by the Daguerrean process; and although the results of these experiments were far from satisfactory, they promised enough to lead to further efforts in this direction, renewed with each step in the gradual improvement of the photographic art. These exertions were crowned by a continual progress, which did not however keep pace with the development of other branches of photography, though it must be admitted that in the hands of the more modern experimenters, and especially of Prof. Gerlach of Erlangen, Jos. Albert of Munich and Dr. R. L. Maddox of Southampton, the success has been such as to guarantee a wide field of usefulness for this method of representation.

In America, the chief experimenters have been Prof. O. N. Rood of Columbia College and Mr. Lewis M. Rutherfurd of New AM. JOUR. SCI.-SECOND SERIES, VOL. XLII, No. 125.-SEPT, 1866.

York. Besides these, mention must be made of the paper of Dr. John Dean of Boston on the Spinal Cord, which is illustrated by photomicrographs reproduced by photolithography. The work of Dr. Dean however was done with magnifying powers not exceeding ten or twelve diameters, while both Professor Rood and Mr. Rutherfurd have experimented with very high powers.

Prof. Rood published a very interesting account of his process in this Journal in 1861.' Omitting details, it appears from this paper that in his operations, he used direct sunlight for illumination, and employed ordinary achromatic objectives with or without eye-pieces. The difference between the visual and chemical foci he endeavored to overcome by an alteration of the fine adjustment after the plan suggested by Shadbolt." Prof. Rood thus obtained photographs, chiefly of diatoms, so far as I have been able to learn, with powers as high as the 4th objective, which gave with five feet distance 460 diameters, with about three feet distance and the long eye-piece 1300 diameters. The pictures thus obtained compared favorably with any which have been taken with achromatic objectives. In May, 1865, Mr. Lewis M. Rutherfurd, of New York, published a paper on Astronomical Photography," which contained the following suggestive passages. "The image of a star at the focus of a perfectly corrected objective would be a point, the apex of all conceivable cones having the object glass or parts of it as the bases. This point falling upon a prism would be converted in a line, red at one end and violet at the other, with the intermediate colors in their proper places. If, however, the different colored rays are not all brought to the same focus, the spectrum will no longer be a line, but in the uncorrected colors will be expanded to a brush the width of which will be the diameter of the cone where intercepted by the prism. It will thus be seen that a simple glance at a star spectrum will indicate at once what parts of the spectrum are bounded by parallel lines and consequently converged to one focal point, and what parts do not conform to this condition, and also the amount of divergence. On applying this test I found that an objective of flint and crown in which the visual was united with the photographic focus, (in other words, where the instrument could be focalized on a plate of ground glass by the eye, as in ordinary cameras, and in the heliographs constructed by Dalmayer for the Kew observatory and for the Russian government,) is a mere compromise to convenience in which both visual and actinic qualities are sacrificed. "

On the practical application of Photography to the microscope; by Prof. O. N. Rood; vol. xxxii, p. 186.

"On the photographic delineation of microscopic objects by artificial illumination. By Geo. Shadbolt, Esq. Quarterly Journ. of Microscopical Science, vol. i, p. 165. "Astronomical Photography; by Lewis M. Rutherfurd, this Journal, xxxix, 304.

"In order to bring the actinic portion of the spectrum between parallel borders, i. e., to one focus, it is necessary that a given crown lens should be combined with a flint which will produce a combined focal length about one-tenth shorter than would be required to satisfy the conditions of achromatism for the eye, and in this condition the objective is entirely worthless for vision." With a telescopic objective constructed on this principle, Mr. Rutherfurd obtained telescopic photographs of such satisfactory quality that he concludes his paper as follows:

"The success of this telescopic objective has encouraged me to hope that an almost equal improvement may be made for photography in the microscope, which instrument is more favorably situated for definition than the telescope, since it is independent of atmospheric conditions. Its achromatic status is easily examined by the spectroscope, using as a star the solar image reflected from a minute globule of mercury. Mr. Wales is now constructing for me a one-tenth objective, which, upon his new plan, is to be provided with a tube so arranged as to admit the removal of the rear combination, and in place of the one ordinarily used, one is to be substituted at will which shall bring to one focus the actinic rays."

This objective was satisfactorily constructed by Mr. Wales (of Fort Lee, N. J.) and Mr. Rutherfurd made with it a number of experiments, full of promise, though his other pursuits prevented him from following out the new plan to its ultimate results.

Such was the condition of photo-micrography in America when it occurred to me to resort to this method of illustration in preparing proper representations of the histological studies of camp diseases which have been made by me or under my direction for the Official Medical History of the War of the Rebellion.

I at once visited Mr. Rutherfurd, whose paper had attracted my attention, and I received from him many important suggestions which I desire to acknowledge in the fullest manner. Among these I may especially mention the plan of constructing the objective above indicated, the use of the ammonio-sulphate of copper, and the suggestion of substituting a properly constructed concave for the eye-piece.

In developing these suggestions the actual manipulations were assigned to Asst.Surgeon and Brevet Capt. Edward Curtis, U.S.A., of the Army Medical Museum, and to his patience, tact and ingenuity I am indebted for the successful issue of the experiments which were undertaken. The results attained have been most satisfactory, excelling, as is confidently believed, anything heretofore done in this direction. This is also the opinion of Dr. Maddox, whose judgment is of the greater value as he is one of the most successful laborers in this direction in Europe.

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