Sounding and Sensitive Flames

Abstract

IN a letter which I have just received from Dr. A. K. Irvine, of Glasgow, my attention is drawn to a short abstract of some of his experiments with Barry's sensitive flame, which appeared in the English Mechanic of Dec. 15, 1871, a few months previously to the appearance in the Journal of the Franklin Institute, and in the American Journal of Science, of the description, referred to briefly in my last letter (NATURE, vol. xi. pp. 6 to 8), of Mr. Geyer's researches on the acoustic properties of the same flame, some particulars of which Dr. Irvine appears also to have noticed independently. The few lines in which his observations are recorded corroborate so fully the character and mode of action of the flame as now pretty perfectly established, that a short extract from them will scarcely be without interest, from the satisfactory support which it offers to the accounts and explanations that other investigators of this flame have elsewhere given in graphic terms of its appearance.