ABSTRACT
William Mullinger Higgins, as lecturer of natural philosophy at Guy’s Hospital in London, was keen to promote the natural sciences as a powerful epistemological framework that those practicing music should work to emulate. Musical practice, Higgins asserted, relied on inspiration and aesthetic skill, combined with “scientific knowledge” of nature. In all experiments upon the conduction of sound, it is absolutely necessary that the substance, whose office it is to carry the sound, should be homogeneous. Many liquids have the property of conducting sound as well as gases and vapours. Elastic solids are found to be better conductors of sound than liquids. It is well known the ticking of a watch may be distinctly heard at the end of a long piece of timber, opposite to that at which the watch is placed. The human ear is a very beautiful and complete arrangement of canals and orifices for the transmission of sound.
