242 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



inents. Many have become obsolete, but others are still hi constant 

 use, and are found with various modifications in all countries. They 

 give evidence of high civilization at a very early period, not only in 

 the costliness and rarity of the materials used, and the knowledge of 

 the science of acoustics displayed in their production, but in the men- 

 tal power required for their first conception. 



The hollow-cone-shaped porcelain vases of China, that have five 

 holes to be stopped so that the air within may be made to vibrate in 

 certain determinate ways to produce with accuracy the notes required 

 by the performer, are, as wind-instruments, marvels of inventive gen- 

 ius. The pipes of a Chinese organ are rendered dumb by a hole 

 bored near the foot of each one, and which the player stops with 

 his finger when the pipe is required to sound its note. Acousticians 

 fail to comprehend this ; and, although enormously large church- 

 organs are built by ourselves, we do not really know the motion of 

 the vibrating column of air in any one pipe, the wind with which it 

 is supplied not entering it. Nor can we tell why one stopped with a 

 plug at the top, when sounded, vibrates violently on two of its sides, 

 the other two remaining quiescent. Various other phenomena, that 

 are said to be fully understood in recent works on sound, are only 

 partially accounted for. 



There is a tendency to refer all instruments to respective epochs, 

 according to their degrees of development, partly because our piano- 

 forte has been so rapidly elaborated from the Irish harp, which alone 

 had a tension-bar, and our harmonium from the Chinese reed, also by 

 the key-board appliance, and partly because consistent theories are 

 so easily invented. TVe should, therefore, be on our guard in this 

 matter, as in others, respecting chronological sequences, and remember 

 that many instruments have been periodically simplified, as in the ease 

 of the violin ; or chosen for their simplicity, as in the case of the 

 Greek lyre over that of the Egyptian harp, notwithstanding its ex- 

 tremely limited powers ; and particularly the historic fact that most 

 elaborate instruments were known in mythologic times in China. 



Adopting the classification of Jubal the sixth from Adam " harp 

 and organ " (commonly called " string and wind "), and adding the 

 generally unrecorded pereussive instruments to form the third genus, 

 it is not difiicult to invent a theory of development. For we may 

 assume that the warrior's bow-string, giving a well-defined tone when 

 pulled with the finger, led to two or more strings being systematized 

 and plucked with the plectrum or struck with mallets, giving rise to 

 the many forms of Egyptian harps, all of which are in the form of 

 a bow, and have no " tension-bar " to resist the pull of the strings ; 

 then that the friction of two bows led to the violin species, by the 

 addition and augmentation of resonating cavities for one bow and the 

 modification of the other bow, which has only recently been made, and 

 the addition of a finger-board. 



