Books › Crown encyclopedia and gazetteer, 1903 › scan 143
Scan 143
Crown encyclopedia and gazetteer, 1903
10 lines. Read by computer on 19 September 2026. Printed page 2569. See the scan on archive.org.
1raised up from it by a bridge, which is supported in the interior by the sound post; and on the belly there are two sound-holes opposite each other, of a form resembling the letter f, or rather the long l. The sounds are produced by drawing a bow across the strings, the upper surface of the bridge being convexly curved, so as to enable the bow to be drawn along each string separately, without coming in contact with the rest. The modern violin has four strings of gut, the lowest covered with fine silvered copper wire, or sometimes, in the best instruments, with silver or even gold wire. These strings are tuned in fifths, the highest or first string sounding E on the fourth space of the treble clef, and the other three the A, D, and G in succession below. No instrument can compare with the violin in power of expression and execution. It has an unlimited command over a very wide range of sounds, to which any degree of piano and forte, of staccato and legato, can be imparted. In orchestral music there are always two different violin parts known as first and second violin; and the same is generally the case when the violin is used in concerted music, the usual arrangement of stringed quartet music being for two violins, viola, and violoncello.
3Experience has shown that the minutest details of form and proportion, and the material of which each separate part is made, are matters of vital importance to the quality of the violin. The great makers seem by a succession of delicate experiments and observations to have attained to acoustical qualities of high perfection, which their careful workmanship and extreme dexterity enabled them in all cases unfailingly to reproduce. The prices of the best violins of Stradivari and Guarnieri del Gesu range from $1,000 to $2,500, but several have exceeded the latter figure; one was sold at Stuttgart a few years ago at the fancy price of $10,250.
5Violoncello, a bow instrument of the viol class, held by the performer between the legs, and filling a place between the viola and the double-bass. It is strung with four gut strings, the lower two covered with silver wire, and tuned in fifths. The compass usually employed extends from C on the second leger line below the bass staff to A on the second space of the treble, though soloists play an octave higher, with all the intermediate semitones.
7Viper, a genus of venomous snakes. This family includes many important forms — e.g., the common adder, the asp, extending as far N. as Sweden; the African horned viper and puff adder, the Indian daboia or Russell's viper, and the Indian Echis carinata. The head is relatively broad, somewhat triangular, and generally covered with scales; the eye has a vertical pupil, and there is no pit between it and the nostril; the maxilla bears on each side one functional fang, usually with several reserve fangs beside it; the poison is virulent. The vipers are widely distributed through Europe and Australia; the majority are African. As far as is known they are viviparous.
9Viper's Bugloss, a genus of plants. The species are large herbaceous plants or shrubs, rough with tubercles and hairs. Their flowers are often very beautiful. The common viper's bugloss, a large annual plant, is a native of Great Britain and of most parts of Europe growing in dry places, not infrequently in cornfields. Its flowers are at first reddish, and afterward blue. It derives its name, viper's bugloss, from spots on its stem,
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