Part 8

The tabor is still much as it was in Fra Angelico's day (judging from the angel above referred to), and indeed in earlier times, as shown in the piping angel in Lincoln Cathedral. We can see what a drum-maker calls the ropes and braces {109a} for tightening the parchment; the snares are also shown in many early drawings of tabors. These are pieces of gut or of horse-hair, stretched across the drum-head, which add a spirited rattle to its tone. Why the first edition of the _Dictionary of Music_ went out of its way to say that the tabor had no snares I cannot guess.

In many of the mediaeval drawings the artist is shown beating his drum on the snare side. I had fancied that this was only one more instance of the bad drawing of musical instruments, but when I saw the careful work of Luca della Robbia, in which the tabors are all beaten on the snare side, I could no longer doubt. I was, however, glad to find in a French account {109b} of the Provencal 3-holed pipe or galoubet, that this custom survives. In Luca della Robbia's work a single snare-cord is shown instead of four to six catgut lines as in modern drums and this is also true of the Provencal instrument. So that both the characteristics that seemed strange to me in Luca's tabor survive in Provence.

It may not be generally known that the French for the snare of a drum is _timbre_; this is the original meaning of the word, and its familiar use to mean the characteristic tone of a musical sound is later. According to Darmstetter the word 'timbre' is own brother to 'tambour,' both being derived from a low Latin form of tympanum.

The tabor-stick has changed since the early centuries. In some of the old drawings the taborer is striking his instrument with a bludgeon, instead of the light and elegant sticks such as are to be seen in Mr. Manning's collection at Oxford. Such implements were doubtless treasured by the taborer. Valmajour, the tabourinaire in Daudet's _Numa Roumestan_, possessed a drum-stick which had been in the family for 200 years.

The way of holding the drum has not always been the same. Nowadays we are told to hang it from the thumb or wrist. But in many early drawings it is apparently firmly strapped or tied to the forearm, or even above the elbow. {110a} The Lincoln Angel and Luca's boy have tabors supported by a string round the neck, and this I find to be the best method.

I hope that the drum may long survive in Provence with its ancient companion the pipe. {110b} A different instrument, however, supplies an accompaniment to the galoubet in the Basque provinces. It is a rough sort of lyre with six or seven strings tuned alternately to the tonic and dominant, which beaten with a stick make a drone bass to the pipe. It has the attractively savage name of _toon-toona_, an imitative word like tom-tom; the galoubet is called the _cherula_.

From a French cyclopaedia I learn that in Provence the taborer's art was a secret passed on from father to son, a mystery they refused to teach for money. They appeared to hold the patriotic opinion that the art of playing the galoubet, or as they call it, the _flutet_, has never spread from Provence because of its extreme difficulty. This has been a comfort to me in my attempts to play the pipe and tabor.

APPENDIX I DRAWINGS AND CARVINGS OF PIPERS

At the risk of being tedious in the way of repetition I have thought it worth while to put together a rough list of the illustrations of pipe and tabor which I have met with.

The earliest representation of a player on the 3-holed pipe, of which I have any knowledge, is the beautiful figure in the Angel Choir at Lincoln. Its date is, I believe, 1270, and it has been injured so that it is not possible to be sure of the manner in which the pipe is held. The tabor is suspended by means of a string round the neck.

The most careful representation of our instrument is that by Luca della Robbia, figured at p. 102, in which what I call the correct grip is given.

In Pierpoint Morgan's _Catalogue of Early Printed Books_, Vol II., p. 118, are some illustrations from Gafori, 1492. The pipe is quite incorrectly held, more than two fingers being employed while the thumb is free.

_Ibid._, Vol III., p. 82. In a figure from Pierre Michaud's _Dance des Aveugles_, 1485, the pipe has four instead of two holes on the upper surface.

_Ibid._, Vol III., p. 86. The pipe is incorrect, the holes being too far from the lower end of the instrument; the hand is wrongly given according to our standards, the little finger being flourished in the air. The tabor is suspended from the hand as in the English style, and is struck on the snare side.

In Kemp's _Nine Daies Wonder_ (see above p. 102) the drawing of the pipe is not instructive.

In Strutt's _Sports and Pastimes_ there are several early drawings of performers on the 3-holed pipe. The grip in the majority is correct, _i.e._ there are three fingers visible, two covering the holes and the ring finger gripping against the little finger underneath. The illustrations are also correct in the fingers being close to the lower end of the pipe.

In Betley Hall, Staffordshire, is a painted glass window, probably dating from 1535, in which a piper is represented. Mr. Tollet, a former squire of Betley, gave an account of it in Johnson and Steevens' Shakspeare, which is reprinted in a privately published book by Barthomley. The pipe is a conical tube, on which four fingers are represented; it could not, I believe, have been drawn from a model.

In Mahillon's _Catalogue_ i., p. 375, is a figure of a Basque playing a 3-holed pipe, and accompanying himself on the tountouna, a rough stringed instrument. The grip seems to be carefully drawn, but it is hard to see how it could be efficient, only two fingers being seen on the upper surface of the pipe. On the other hand, in a photograph of a Basque playing the same instrument (which I owe to the kindness of a correspondent), the grip is like that figured by Mahillon.

Finally, in _Punch_, November 13, 1907, a 3-holed pipe is incorrectly drawn. The bore of the instrument is conical, the holes are incorrectly given, and the hand is wrong.

APPENDIX II THE FINGERING OF THE 3-HOLED PIPER

The following diagram gives the fingerings which I have found to be best for a 3-holed pipe, a copy of an old one in the possession of Mr. Manning, of Oxford, to whom I am indebted for much kindly assistance.

[Picture: Fig. 6. 3-holed pipe fingering]

The fingerings are given for the keys D and G. I have not attempted to play in other keys. For each note the upper circle represents the thumbhole; 1 and 2 are for the first and second fingers respectively. The black circles are supposed to be closed, the white are open. Holes that are half open are represented by circles half white, half black. In the case of A2 and B2 the circles are three-quarter black; this means that a very minute crack is left open.

It is important to remember that each pipe has its individuality. For instance, in one of my instruments G must have the thumb hole completely open, and the alternate fingering (with the index hole closed) is quite out of tune. The note E is sometimes sharp; in the pipe, the fingerings of which are given in fig. 6, this fault is corrected by means of a thin metal lining to the lower hole.

VIII STEPHEN HALES {115} 1677-1761

In attempting to give a picture of any man's life and work it is well to follow the rule of the _Dictionary of National Biography_, and begin with the dates of his birth and death. Stephen Hales was born in 1677 and died in 1761, having had experiences of the reigns of seven sovereigns.

The authorities for his life are given in my article on Hales in the _Dictionary of National Biography_. Botanists in general probably take their knowledge of the main facts of his life from Sachs' _History of Botany_. It is therefore worth while to point out that both the original and the English translation (1890) contain the incorrect statement that Hales was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, and that he held the living of Riddington, whereas he is one of the glories of Corpus, and was perpetual curate of Teddington. These inaccuracies, however, are trifles in relation to the great and striking merits of Sachs' _History_, a work which, to my thinking, exhibits the strength and brilliance of the author's mind as clearly as any of his more technical writings. Sachs was no niggling biographer, and his broad vigorous outlines must form the basis of what anyone, who follows him, can write about the botanists of a past day.

To return to Hales' birth. It is of interest to note how he fits into the changing procession of lives, to see what great men overlap his youth, who were his contemporaries in his maturity, and who were appearing on the scientific stage as he was leaving it.

Sir Isaac Newton was the dominant figure in English science while Hales was developing. He died in 1727, the year in which Hales published his _Vegetable Staticks_, a book, which like the _Origin of Species_, appeared when its author was 50 years of age. Newton was at the zenith of his fame when Hales was a little boy of 10--his _Principia_ having been published in 1687, and when Hales went up to Cambridge in 1696 he must have seen the great man coming from his rooms {116a} in the N.E. corner of the Great Court of Trinity--that corner where Newton's and other more modern ghosts surely walk--Macaulay who used to read, pacing to and fro by the chapel, {116b} and Thackeray who, like his own Esmond, lived "near to the famous Mr. Newton's lodgings." In any case there can be no doubt that the genius of Newton cast its light on Hales, as Sachs has clearly pointed out (_Hist. Bot._, Eng. Tr., p. 477). Another great man influenced Hales, namely Robert Boyle, who was born 1627 and died 1691. John Mayow again, that brilliant son of Oxford, whose premature death at 39 in 1679 was so heavy a blow to science, belongs to the same school as Hales--the school which was within an ace of founding a rational chemistry, but which was separated from the more obvious founders of that science by the phlogiston-theory of Becchers and Stahl. I do not find any evidence that Hales was influenced by the phlogistic writers, and this is comprehensible enough, if, as I think, he belongs to the school of Mayow and Boyle.

The later discoverers in chemistry are of the following dates, Black 1728-1799, Cavendish 1731-1810, Priestley 1733-1804, Scheele 1742-1786, Lavoisier 1743, guillotined 1794. These were all born about the time of Hales' zenith, nor did he live {117} to see the great results they accomplished. But it should not be forgotten that Hales' chemical work made more easy the triumphant road they trod.

I have spoken of Hales in relation to chemists and physicists because, though essentially a physiologist, he seems to me to have been a chemist and physicist who turned his knowledge to the study of life, rather than a physiologist who had some chemical knowledge.

Whewell points out in his _History of the Inductive __Sciences_ {118a} that the physiologist asks questions of Nature in a sense differing from that of the physicist. The _Why_? of the physicist meant _Through what causes_? that of the physiologist--_to what end_? This distinction no longer holds good, and if it is to be applied to Hales it is a test which shows him to be a physicist. For, as Sachs shows, though Hales was necessarily a teleologist in the theological sense, he always asked for purely mechanical explanations. He was the most unvitalistic of physiologists, and I think his explanations suffered from this cause. For instance, he seems to have held that to compare the effect of heat on a growing root to the action of the same cause on a thermometer {118b} was a quite satisfactory proceeding. And there are many other passages in _Vegetable Staticks_ where one feels that his speculations are too heavy for his knowledge.

Something must be said of Hales' relation to his predecessors and successors in botanical work. The most striking of his immediate predecessors were Malpighi 1628-1694, Grew 1628-1711, Ray 1627-1705, and Mariotte (birth unknown, died 1684); and of these the three first were born one hundred years before the publication of _Vegetable Staticks_. Malpighi and Grew were essentially plant-anatomists, though both dealt in physiological speculations. Their works were known to Hales, but they do not seem to have influenced him.

We have seen that as a chemist Hales is somewhat of a solitary figure, standing between what may be called the periods of Boyle and of Cavendish. This is even more striking in his botanical position, for here he stands in the solitude of all great original inquirers. We must go back to Van Helmont, 1577-1644, to find anyone comparable to him as an experimentalist. His successors have discovered much that was hidden from him; but consciously or unconsciously they have all learned from him the true method and spirit of physiological work.

It may be urged that in exalting Hales I am unfair to Malpighi. It may be fairer to follow Sachs in linking these great men together, and to insist on the wonderful fact that before Malpighi's book in 1671, vegetable physiology was still where Aristotle left it, whereas 56 years later, in 1727, we find in Hales' book an experimental science in the modern sense.

It should not be forgotten that students of animal physiology agree with botanists as to Hales' greatness. A writer in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ speaks of him as "the true founder of the modern experimental method in physiology."

According to Sachs, Ray made some interesting observations on the transmission of water, but on the whole what he says on this subject is not important. There is no evidence that Ray influenced Hales.

Mariotte, the physicist, came to one physiological conclusion of great weight; {119} namely, that the different qualities of plants, _e.g._ taste, odour, etc., do not depend on the absorption from the soil of differently scented or flavoured principles, as the Aristotelians imagined, but on _specific differences_ in the way in which different plants deal with identical food material--an idea which is at the root of a sane physiological outlook. These views were published in 1679, {120} and may have been known to Hales. He certainly was interested in such ideas, as is indicated by his attempts to give flavour to fruit by supplying them with medicated fluids. He probably did not expect success, for he remarks (p. 360): "The specifick differences of vegetables, which are all sustained and grow from the same nourishment, is [_sic_] doubtless owing to the very different formation of their minute vessels, whereby an almost infinite variety of combinations of the common principles of vegetables is made." He continues in the following delightful passage: "And could our eyes attain to a sight of the admirable texture of the parts on which the specific differences in plants depends, [_sic_] what an amazing and beautiful scene of inimitable embroidery should we behold? what a variety of masterly strokes of machinery? what evident marks of consummate wisdom should we be entertained with?" To conclude what has been said on Hales' chronological position--Ingenhousz, the chief founder of the modern point of view on plant nutrition, was born 1730 and published his book, _On Vegetables_, etc., in 1779. So that what was said of Hales' chemical position is again true of him considered in relation to nutrition; he did not live to see the great discoveries made at the close of the 18th century.

There is in his writing a limpid truthfulness and simplicity, unconsciously decorated with pretty 18th century words and half-rusticities which give it a perennial charm. And inasmuch as I desire to represent Hales, not only as a man to be respected but also to be loved, it will be as well to give what is known of the personal side of his character before going on to a detailed account of his work.

He was, as we have seen, entered at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in June 1696. In February 1702-3 he was admitted a fellow of the College. It was during his life as a fellow that he began to work at chemistry in what he calls "the elaboratory in Trinity College." The room is now occupied by the Senior Bursar, and forms part of the beautiful range of buildings in the bowling green, which, freed from stucco and other desecration, are made visible in their ancient guise by the piety of a son of Trinity and the wisdom of the College authorities. It was here, according to Dr. Bentley, that "the thieving Bursars of the old set embezzled the College timber," {121} and it was this room that was fitted up as "an elegant laboratory" in 1706 for John Francis Vigani, an Italian chemist, who had taught unofficially in the University for some years, and became, in 1703, the first Professor of Chemistry at Cambridge.

Judging from his book, _Medulla Chymiae_, 1682, Vigani was an eminently practical person, who cared greatly about the proper make of a furnace and the form of a retort but was not cumbered with theories.

Hales vacated his fellowship and became minister or perpetual curate of Teddington {122} in 1708-9, and there he lived until his death, fifty-two years afterwards. He was married (? 1719) and his wife died without issue in 1721.

He attracted the attention of Royalty, and received plants from the King's garden at Hampton Court. Frederick Prince of Wales, the father of George III., is said to have been fond of surprising him in his laboratory at Teddington. This must surely be a unique habit in a prince, but we may remember that, in the words of the Prince's mock epitaph, "Since it is only Fred there's no more to be said." He became Clerk of the Closet to the Dowager Princess, and this "mother of the best of Kings," as she calls herself, put up his monument in Westminster Abbey. Hales had the honour of receiving the Copley Medal from the Royal Society in 1739, and Oxford made him a D.D. in 1733.

Some years ago I made a pilgrimage to Teddington, and found in the parish registers many interesting entries by his hand; the last, in a tremulous writing, is on November 4th, 1760, two months before he died. He was clearly an active parish priest. He made his female parishioners do public penance when he thought they deserved it. He did much for the fabric of the church. "In 1754 {123a} he helped the parish to a decent water supply and characteristically records in the parish register that the outflow was such as to fill a two-quart vessel in 'three swings of a pendulum beating seconds, which pendulum was 39+2/10 inches long from the suspending nail to the middle of the plumbet or bob.'" Under the tower he helped to build (which now serves as a porch) Stephen Hales is buried, and the stone which covers his body is being worn away by the feet of the faithful. By the piety of a few botanists a mural tablet, on which the epitaph is restored, has been placed near the grave.

Horace Walpole called Hales "a poor, good, primitive creature" and Pope {123b} (who was his neighbour) said, "I shall be very glad to see Dr. Hales, and always love to see him, he is so worthy and good a man." Peter Collinson writes of "his constant serenity and cheerfulness of mind"; it is also recorded that "he could look even upon wicked men, and those who did him unkind offices, without any emotion of particular indignation; not from want of discernment or sensibility, but he used to consider them only like those experiments which, upon trial, he found could never be applied to any useful purpose, and which he therefore calmly and dispassionately laid aside."

Hales' work may be divided into three heads:

I Physiological, animal and vegetable; II Chemical; III Inventions and miscellaneous essays.

Under No. I I shall deal only with his work on plants. The last heading (No. III) I shall only refer to slightly, but the variety and ingenuity of his miscellaneous publications is perhaps worth mention here as an indication of the quality of his mind. It seems to me to have had something in common with the versatile ingenuity of Erasmus Darwin and of his grandson Francis Galton. The miscellaneous work also exhibits Hales as a philanthropist, who cared passionately for bettering the health and comfort of his fellow creatures by improving their conditions of life.

His chief book from the physiological and chemical point of view is his _Vegetable Staticks_. It will be convenient to begin with the physiological part of this book, and refer to the chemistry later. _Vegetable Staticks_ is a small 8vo of 376 pages, dated on the title-page 1727. The "_Imprimatur_ Isaac Newton Pr. Reg. Soc." is dated February 16, 1720, and this date is of some slight interest, for Newton died on March 20, and _Vegetable Staticks_ must have been one of the last books he signed.

The dedication is to George Prince of Wales, afterwards George III. The author cannot quite avoid the style of his day, for instance: "And as _Solomon_ the greatest and wisest of men, disdeigned {124} not to inquire into the nature of Plants, _from the __Cedar of Lebanon_, _to the Hyssop that springeth out of the wall_: So it will not, I presume, be an unacceptable entertainment to your Royal Highness," etc.

But the real interest of the dedication is its clear statement of his views on the nutrition of plants. He asserts that plants obtain nourishment, not only from the earth, "but also more sublimed and exalted food from the air, that wonderful fluid, which is of such importance to the life of Vegetables and Animals," etc. We shall see that his later statement is not so definite, and it is well to rescue this downright assertion from oblivion.

His book begins with the research for which he is best known, namely that on transpiration. He took a sunflower growing in a flowerpot, covering the surface of the earth with a plate of thin milled lead, and cemented it so that no vapour could pass, leaving a corked hole to allow of the plant being watered. He did not take steps to prevent loss through the pot, but at the end of the experiment cut off the plant, cemented the stump, and found that the "unglazed porous pot" perspired 2 ozs. in 12 hours, and for this he made due allowance.

The plant so prepared he proceeded to weigh at stated intervals. He obtained the area of the leaves by dividing them into parcels according to their several sizes, and measuring one leaf {125} of each parcel. The loss of water in 12 hours converted to the metric system is 1.3 c.c. per 100 sq. cm. of leaf-surface; and this is of the same order of magnitude as Sachs' result, {126a} namely, 2.2 c.c. per 100 sq. cm.