426 BEPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1900. 



theorists, as by Janiard' in a treatise of 1759, a copy of which is in the 

 Lenox Library, New York; and Fetis' in his brief account of this 

 author refers to others who maintained similar views. 



III. INSTRUMENTS OF THE FLUTE TYPE. 



The simple flutes are instruments of a type more primitive and more 

 widely distributed than fretted stringed instruments. These instru- 

 ments are sometimes side-blown, as is the case with the modern flute; 

 or end blown, as one blows into a key or pan's pipe; or blown with a 

 whistle mouthpiece, like the flageolet; or blown with a weak reed, as 

 the oboe. For the purposes of this discussion the mode of exciting 

 the vibration is immaterial. All of them embody the law that the 

 frequency of vibration of a column of air in a tube depends mainlj^on its 

 length, and the variation in length of the air column so as to produce 

 several sounds from one tube is produced by opening holes in the 

 sides of the tube. In practice these holes never can open so freely to 

 the outside air that the portion of the tube beyond them may be con- 

 sidered as removed (the possibility or necessit}^ of cross-fingering 

 proves this to the player), so the proper location and diameter of the 

 holes to produce the notes of our scale of even quality are fixed, not 

 by a simple law as the frets on the guitar are located, but by laborious 

 experimenting to get a standard instrument which is then reproduced 

 with Chinese fidelity. 



Now, as one looks over a collection of wind instruments, like the 

 splendid one in the U. S. National Museum, or examines flutes figured 

 in books, it will be eas}^ to recognize that there are two principal 

 types — (A) those having the holes spaced at sensibly equal distances, 

 and (B) those having two groups each of three equally spaced holes, 

 the interval between the nearest holes of the two groups being obvi- 

 ously greater than that between the holes of each group. As the 

 common primitive method of making the holes is by burning, the 

 holes are generally more uniform in diameter than those on European 

 flutes of a century ago. 



Illustrations of flutes of type A are found in Engel's Musical 

 Instruments, some of which are copied on Plate 2. Dr. Wilson's 

 paper on Prehistoric Art' has many more illustrations, as the figures of 

 bone flutes from Costa Rica and British Guiana, of pottery flutes from 

 Mexico and the Zuni Indians, of tu))es with a simple reed from Egypt 

 and Palestine, of wooden flutes brought from Thibet by Mr. Rockhill, 

 and a wooden flute from the Kiowa Indians. Fetis* has a cut of the 

 staghorn flute from the stone age with three equidistant holes, referred 



^ Jamard, Recherches snr la Theorie de la Musique. 

 ^Fetis, Biographie universelle des Musicieiis. 

 ^Report of the U. S. National Museum for 1896, pp. 325-664. 

 * Histoire generale de la musique, 1, p. 26. 



