526 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



to 51 clauce or soug, or for any similar purpose, they would be musical 

 instruments. Any attempt to decide to wbicli use these objects were 

 put and so decide whether they were or were not musical instruments 

 would be mere speculation. Tliat they might have been used as such, 

 and that hundreds of other similar instruments have been found which 

 were used as musical instruments, justiiies this classihcation and their 

 insertion in this paper. 



The Grotto or Cavern of Gourdan, in Haute Garonne, France, was 

 explored by Judge E. Piette. The work of exploration lasted for three 

 years (1871-1874), and was conducted by a Frenchman whom I met 

 there who served as cook at Delmonico's for four years (1861-1864), and 

 who, having thus made his fortune, returned to Gourdan and estab- 

 lished himself as innkeeper. He did the work of excavation under 

 pay from Judge Piette, and it occupied him for three years. This was 

 another of the caverns in which the superimposed strata evidenced the 

 chronological and cultural sequence between the Paleolithic and Neo- 

 lithic occupations. In a stratum of the later period, amid much char- 

 coal and cinders, he found a bone llute or pipe pierced with holes and 

 capable of producing three notes. 



A memoir appeared in the report of the Socio te Academique des 

 Sciences, etc., of St. Quentin, France, for the year 1873-74, XII, 3d ser., 

 p. 339, written M. Textor de Kavisi, wherein he argued as to the exist- 

 ence of musical instruments in the age of stone, and, maintaining the 

 affirmative, he cites the invention of M. Baudre, who had made what 

 he called a "Clavier de silex," that is to say, a sort of piano or xeno- 

 phone, composed of twenty-eight stones, twenty-six of Hint and two of 

 schist. They were arranged according to note and sound, whether 

 made so by size or shape is immaterial, and were struck with a pebble, 

 producing the melody. The inventor chose natural pieces of flint, and 

 did not chip them to size or form. He insisted that the natural pieces 

 produced infinitely better tones than those which were chipped. While 

 this instrument was entirely possible in Paleolithic times, yet there is 

 nothing to show that it was ever invented or used. Indeed, there is 

 nothing in all the discoveries that have ever been made to show that 

 Paleolithic man had any system of music applicable to this instrument, 

 or that he would have recognized it or the music if either had been 

 Ijresented before him. There is an instrument similar to this in the 

 Museum of Science and Art at Dublin, but the stones are all of schist 

 and none of flint. These are no evidence of prehistoric musical instru- 

 ments, and are only ingenious modern inventions by Avhich our present 

 scales of music are brought into use. 



NEOLITHIC AND BRONZE AGES. 



M. Fetis ^ gives an illustration of a pipe from a prehistoric grave 

 of the iN'eolithic period near Poitiers, and of which a cast was fur- 



' Histoire Generale de la Musique. "■ 



