1883.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA 81 



The desire to make imitations of objects hy which they were 

 surrounded emit musical tones, was no doubt suggested by the 

 songs of birds and various sounds produced by animals. Gurney, 

 in his admirable work entitled the " Power of Sound," page 143, 

 states that the third note of the scale has had a natural charm for 

 man as for the cuckoo ; thus this well-known musical authority 

 recognizes the fact that certain musical sounds or tones were 

 agreeable to the ears of man ; and hereafter, in a series of whistles 

 or pitch-pipes, exhumed from the sepulchres of these Aztec people, 

 I will endeavor to show that one of them is pitched almost 

 precisely in the tones given by the Mexican Hyludse. That 

 musical sounds attract the attention of barbarians and savages, 

 is well authenticated by travelers and those who have lived 

 among them ; it may therefore be supposed that these children 

 of nature noticed and strove to reproduce sounds, which, how- 

 ever harsh and unmusical to us, to them were pleasing, because 

 they recalled familiar objects. I am of the opinion that the chat- 

 tering of macaws and parrots can be imitated upon several instru- 

 ments I have denominated bird-calls, belonging to the Poinsett 

 collection, in the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia ; by 

 short, quick blowing, they emit sounds very similar to those given 

 by a flock of the above-mentioned birds. 



Wind instruments were known to the Aztecs, as above indicated, 

 by the hii'd-calls ; they also possessed flutes, whistles made of sea- 

 shells and flageolets of baked day or terra-cotta. 



There is a vase of this last-named material in the W. S'. Yaux 

 collection, now in the museum of the Academy of Natural Sciences 

 of Philadelphia, upon which musical sounds may be produced, by 

 applying the lips to certain parts. This unique specimen of a wind 

 instrument was formerly in the possession of my friend Professor 

 Leid}-, and afterward came into that of the late W. S. Yaux, Esq. 

 It is somewhat Roman in form, of a dark color, and ornamented 

 by four grotesque masks, placed around the exterior edge or upper 

 rimj of the base, between which, and the interior of the vessel, 

 there is a broad plane some two inches in width, that is perforated 

 at intervals by small slits at each side, exactly opposite the masks. 

 When covered by the lips and blown into, these slits emit certain 

 musical sounds ; by closing one of the eyes in the masks, which 

 are hollow and connect b}^ means of air-passages with the interior 

 of the vase and slits upon the plane surface, some approach to a 



