The Journal of laryngology and otology . plitudes of movement would gradually diminish until they 304 The Journal of Laryngology, [june, 1905. became so small as to be negligible. Sucli a state of matters isrepresented in Fig. 2, where the basilar membrane is cut longi-tudinally. EF represents the membrane at rest; A represents asection of the fibre which is in completely sympathetic resonancewith the note sounded^ and Avhich makes therefore the greatestexcursions AO; BK represents the excursions made by the fibreB; DH those made by the fibre D, and so on until at the points Eand F the movemen
The Journal of laryngology and otology . plitudes of movement would gradually diminish until they 304 The Journal of Laryngology, [june, 1905. became so small as to be negligible. Sucli a state of matters isrepresented in Fig. 2, where the basilar membrane is cut longi-tudinally. EF represents the membrane at rest; A represents asection of the fibre which is in completely sympathetic resonancewith the note sounded^ and Avhich makes therefore the greatestexcursions AO; BK represents the excursions made by the fibreB; DH those made by the fibre D, and so on until at the points Eand F the movements are so small as to be negligible. Now it mightbe said that since so many fibres are vibrating and a correspond-ing number of nerve-fibres are being stimulated we must hear acorresponding number of notes. But is this last deduction justified ?I think not and will illustrate the point by reference to anothersense, and that most closely allied to the sense of hearing, viz. thesense of touch. Take a pencil or some other moderately sharp-. pointed object and press the point gently against the skin of thefinger. You are conscious of a sense of pressure at a point. Pressa little harder and you are still conscious of pressure at a pointonly. Press still harder, and still you are conscious only of pres-sure at a point. Now still keep the pressure applied and look atyour finger. You will see that if you have pressed hard enough,a considerable area of the skin round about the pencil-point isrendered quite anaemic by the pressure. In this case we havetherefore a large number of nerve-fibres stimulated forcibly, butwe are not conscious of stimulation of any except those at theparticular point at which the pencil is pressing. In other wordsto put it as I put it in my original paper, we are only conscious ofstimulation of that nerve-fibre or those nerve-fibres which are atthe point of maximum stimulation. This is the fundamentalprinciple which lies at the basis of the theory which I am goi
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