WHISTLES ANCIENT AND MODERN. 169 



WHISTLES ANCIENT AND MODERN. 



By M. L. GUTODE. 



~VTO instrument, probably, lias been invested with more va- 

 -L^ rions forms than the whistle. It would take a volume to 

 present properly all of these forms and their passages from one 

 to another, which I have no intention of doing, I aim only to 

 distinguish a few points that may indicate to others how exten- 

 sive a field there is into which they may exj)lore if they will. 

 The primary idea of a whistle lies in the making of a column of 

 air to vibrate, in whatever condition. As there is no lack of 

 means or methods for doing this, the infinite diversity of the 

 forms of the apparatus for producing the vibrations and the re- 

 sultant sounds is a matter of course. The most general form is 

 the human whistle, which one can make sound — after a fashion 

 — without much preliminary training ; but many musicians have 

 made themselves masters of its intonations to such a degree that, 

 instead of the usual inharmonious and unmethodical discords, 

 they can render with it the most difficult passages of elaborate 

 musical compositions, I shall not dwell upon the means that 

 may be employed to make the sounds sharper and to modulate 

 their tones. Every one knows what effects are produced by in- 

 serting the fore and second fingers so as to turn the tongue 

 slightly back as the column of air passes over it, or by sending 

 the blast over the outside of the bent fingers. 



If we seek other primitive whistles, we have them in the 

 hollow-barreled key, the terror of authors and comedians ; the 

 famous willow whistle, cut when the twig is most sappy ; the 

 green dandelion stem, split along its length ; the nut-shell be- 

 tween the fingers ; the cherry - stone, which school-boys grind 

 down so patiently on the soles of their shoes and perforate ; the 

 buck-horn, and all the other things which we are fond of con- 

 triving, in our early youth, with which to split the ears of par- 

 ents and teachers. 



Seeing that so much can be done with such rude means, it is 

 not strange that the whistle was a well-known instrument in an- 

 tiquity. The old Peruvians were past masters in the fabrication 

 of whistles. They made them in great numbers, of earth, and 

 ornamented with various designs and figures of animals. The 

 porcelain-factory at Sevres (Fig. 1) possesses two specimens of 

 their workmanship, one of which resembles a nightingale ; and, 

 when filled with water, it produces a kind of warbling. There is 

 an instrumental museum at the Paris Conservatory of Music, 

 which is open to the public on Thursday afternoons. It was 



