An Architectural Puzzle.

AN ARCHITECTURAL PUZZLE .

SOME years ago now , there were found , embedded in the foundations of the ruins of the old choir walls at Fountains Abbey , certain curious largemouthed pottery vases . Many were the theories respecting them , —some ingenious , some eccentric , many absurd . Mr . Walbran , resting on a passage in " Vitruvius , " declared that , absurd as it might seem , they were for " acoustic purposes ; " and though some doubted still , —antiquaries and archaeologists will

doubt , —the general impression remained that if they still were numbered among the things " a fellow can't understand , " Mr . Walbran ' s explanation was probably the correct one . And so it turns out to be . Those who knew him would feel with the writer that his " doubts were other people ' s certainties . " On May the 21 st , Mr . G . M . Hills , Associate , read before the Royal Instistute of British Architects ah interesting and amply illustrated paper on "Acoustic Vases found built into Churches . "

It appears that the personal interest taken by the author in the discovery ( August , 1878 ) of about fifty earthenware pots built into the nave walls of Leeds Church , near Maidstone , prompted him to compile this first collection , from English and foreign sources , of previous discoveries of the kind . The name " acoustic vases" had been given to such pots built into church walls , with their orifices towards the interior of the building , on the strength of a passage in "Vitruvius" ( V . 5 ) which Mr . Hills quotedat length . In it the great

, , Augustan architect gives highly technical instructions for building , expressly for acoustic purposes , brazen vessels into theatres , adding , " many clever architects who have built theatres in small cities have , for want of others , made use of earthern vessels yielding the proper tones . " After many centuries the chronicler of the Monastery of the Celestins at Metz was the next ancient witness called . Under A . D . 1432 he recorded that in that the PriorOde de Roy

year , , introduced into its church an arrangement of acoustic vases , having been greatly struck with the good effect of such a device in another church . A marginal note , attributed to the chronicler , said "Ecce risu dinga . " The Abbe St . Leger ' s work ( 1665 ) , entitled " L'Apocalypse de Meliton , " gave this instance of the neglect of their duties by the religious orders : " Of fifty singing men that the public maintained in such and such a church there are

sometimes not more than six present at a service ; the choirs are so fitted with jars in the vaults and in the walls , that six voices there make as much noise as forty elsewhere . " A theory tracing such arrangements back to the ancient Chaldeans might be regarded as exploded . Examples of acoustic vases belonging to classic times had been collected by Mr . R . R . Brash . The greater theatre at Hierapytna in Crete had , at least , one row of bronze echeia or jars . At Lyttus there

were three rows . Like provision seemed to have been made at Sagnntum . The ancient theatre at Scythopolis , in Syria , had seven recesses for echeia , in the position indicated by Vitruvius , and like arrangements had been found in a theatre at Arizani , in Asia Minor . Coming to mediaeval examples of so-called acoustic vases , Mr . Hills remarked that they had all been found solidly built into walls—a departure from the Vitruvian doctrine suggesting a different

purpose . Beginning with Continental instances , M . Stassoff , editor of the official archaeological journal of St . Petersburg , was cited to prove that acoustic pottery had been found in a great many ancient Byzantine or Grasco-Rnssian churches in his country . For Sweden and Norway , M . N . M . Mandelgren , a Swedish architect , claimed a pretty considerable number of churches furnished with earthenware pots built into the walls and vaults , with their orifices turned towards the interior of the building . This testimony of