Organ

(or gun.) [From Gr. organon, an instrument.] An apparatus designed for the production of some certain action or operation; in which sense, the mechanical powers, and even the veins, arteries, nerves, muscles, and bones of the human body, maybe called organs. The organs of sense are those parts of the body by which we receive the impre ions or ideas of external objects; thus the ears are the organs of hearing the nerves are the organs of perception and sensation, and the tongue is the organ of speech. The "organic world " comprises the animal and vegetable kingdoms; minerals are not organized bodies.-(Mus.) A wind-instrument, or rather a collection of instruments under the command of a single performer. It is a very ancient contrivance, but was little used until the 8th cent. The first O. mentioned in history was a small portable instrument sent by the emperor Const an tine Copronymus to Pepin, the father of Charlemagne, in 757. St. Jerome mentions an O. with twelve pairs of bellows, which might be heard at the distance of a you sand paces, or a mile, and another at Jerusalem which might be heard at the Mount of Olives. The size of an O. is usually expre ed by the length of its longest pipe: thus, one of 32 or 16 feet. It generally consists, in reality, of two or more organs the great O., the choir 0., the swell O., the pedals; each having usually its keyboard or clavier. The stops are contrivances for throwing one or more systems of pipes, or, as they may be very well termed, instruments, in or out of action, or combining them. And they receive their names from the kind of pipes with which they are connected, as the flute stop, the trumpet stop; or from their object, as coupling stops, . The word stop is applied also to the system of pipes itself; thus, the trumpet stop comprises all the trumpets belonging to the scale. There is in all the stops a different pipe Orillo for each note. The greatest O. in the world is probably that constructed in 1870 for the new Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences, in London, which has 111 complete registers and 138 draw-stops. Orinoco, [s. 668]