http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/1556085

Sound

"The extracts here given from the prefaces to former editions will enable the reader to note what may be called the historic development of the present work. To each succeeding edition I have added an account of the more recent work done by myself and others. As stated elsewhere, the work has appeared in various languages, and, while subjected to justifiable criticism, it has been, on the whole, exceedingly well received. A reviewer of a French translation wrote complainingly of the absence of mathematics from the work. On the other hand, Helmholtz and Wiedemann, who supervised the German translation, wrote approvingly of the manner in which even the more difficult problems of acoustics had been dealt with by a purely experimental method. The learned Germans had seized my object more correctly than the French reviewer. To introduce mathematics into the volume would, from my point of view, have been to ruin it. Like my work on Heat, these lectures on Sound were intended to rouse the public mind to a sense of the interest and importance and, if possible, to the fascinations of physical science. My aim throughout has been to stimulate as much as to instruct"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved).

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