The voice of the singer travels forward more abundantly than
backward, because he uses the roof, and, to some extent, the
walls and floor of his mouth, as a sound reflector. The roof
of his mouth being made of concave plates of bone with a thin
velarium of integument stretched tightly over them, supplies
a model sound-reflector. Every architect who has to build a
concert- or lecture-room, or theater, should study the roof of
his own mouth, and imitate it as nearly as he can in the roof of
his building.
(2156)
* * * * *
The analogies which furnish means of expression to the art of
building find their models in nature. That which we feel at the
sight of an edifice, the artist has felt a hundred times in
contemplating the shifting curves of a hill, the bold edge of a
haughty peak, the immensity of an even plain, a ground hollow,
or gently undulating sheet of water which loses itself in the
mists of the horizon. All the effects produced by architecture
are only an interpretation of natural ones. What is a pyramid?
A hollow cavern in a mountain. What is a Greek temple with its
porticoes and columns? A memory of the sacred woods where were
drest the first altars. What do we feel in entering a Gothic
cathedral? The shudder felt at the divine awfulness of the
forests. And it is also from the natural world that architecture
has taken its decorations. Columns and capitals, rosettes,
flowers intertwinings, ovals, foliage medallions, all remind
us of something seen in the fields and in the woods, in plants
and animals.--VICTOR CHERBULIEZ, _Revue des deux Mondes_.
(2157)
See INSECT A MODEL.