Beelzebubs-Tales-to-His-Grandson-by-G-I-Gurdjieff

corded by a clock mechanism, multiplied by the number of holes in the disk,gives the number of vibrations of sound in a given interval of time.'Unfortunately for the Europeans, neither the inventor of that siren northe one who perfected it knew that sound can be obtained both from the actionof natural vibrations and from the simple flow of air; and as this siren of theirssounds only from the flow of air and not at all from natural vibrations, therecan be no question of determining the exact number of vibrations by theindications of that siren. And the fact that sound can be produced from twocauses, that is, either from natural world-vibrations themselves or simply fromthe flow of air, is indeed a most satisfying and interesting discovery, and nowI shall give you a practical demonstration of this."Having said this, the venerable hadji stood up and brought from anotherpart of the cave a pot of flowers in full bloom which he placed in the middleof the chamber, he then seated himself at the 'vibrosho,' the former'monochord' of the famous Pythagoras."Turning to us he said:'I will now produce from this network of pipes only five distinct tones,and you, please pay attention to this pot of flowers and check your watches tonote how long I continue to produce these tones, keep in mind also the figuresindicated by the needles of the vibrometers.'"Then with a small bellows he began to blow air into the correspondingpipes, which then produced a monotonous melody of five tones."This monotonous melody lasted for ten minutes, and not only did weremember the figures indicated by the needles of the vibrometers but the fivetones were very strongly impressed on our organs of hearing."When the hadji stopped his monotonous music, the flowers in the potwere as fresh as before.