434 REPOKT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1900. 



140 mm. (5i inches), an ordinaiy hand can readily span an octave and a 

 Fifth, because the lingers are not forced into line. 



Examining- iir.st some string instruments, it is found that on a guitar 

 of New York make (No. 55690, U.S.N.M.) the distance between frets 

 ranges from 'S'S to 14 mm. The greatest distance noticed between 

 frets is on the large Siamese Am Chappee (No. 27810, U.S.N.M.), 

 where there are three spaces, respectively, of 71, 73, and 77 mm. A 

 similar instrument examined at the World's Fair held in Chicago had 

 the corresponding spaces 60, 60, and 67 mm. The string lengths to 

 the first frets were, respectively, S78 and 740 mm. The smallest dis- 

 tance observed between frets is the above-cited 14 mm., except 'that 

 the Syrian lute, Blzug (No. 95144, U.S.N.M.), has two spaces of 

 12 and 13 mm. On most instruments the frets cease when the limit 

 of 20 to 25 mm. is reached. It is obvious that these and similar data 

 for fretted instruments are not of much importance unless one can 

 know that the hand was not shifted from one fret to another. 



AVith our instruments shifting is notoriously common, but the histories 

 of the violin report that two or three centuries ago it was a notable thing 

 for a player to shift. The usual theory of the old many-stringed instru- 

 ments, of which the Arab lute is a particularly good example, required 

 the strings to he tuned in Fourths, and the string lengths were not too 

 great f oi- the four fingers to govern all the frets within this range — that 

 is, in a quarter-length of the string — so a shift would be unnecessary. 

 On the Arab lute ^ there were sometimes ten very unequally spaced frets 

 in this space, but for any one tune only a few of them were used, and 

 in the principal modes, ' Ochaq and Rast, one fret each for the index 

 and ring fingers sufficed to give substantially our diatonic scale. 



With simple wind instruments the case is quite diflPerent, for sev- 

 eral fingers must be used simultaneously to cover holes, so the hand 

 can not be shifted. In the Kiowa flute referred to above the uniform 

 distance between holes is 32 mm. ; in the stone whistle from Mex- 

 ico, 20 mm.; in the four Egyptian flageolets and oboes figured by 

 Villoteau (his Plate c c) the intervals are, respectively, 12, 15, 15, and 

 36 mm. These distances require only a convenient spread of the 

 fingers. Many other measures can readily be obtained from the 

 accompanying figures with their appended scales. 



If the musician has a theory demanding that the holes be so near 

 together or so far apart as to make direct fingering inconvenient or 

 impossible, keys with long or short levers are added, as on modern 

 flutes and clarinets, while among the Romans extra holes were bored 

 to provide for several genera, the holes not needed for any tune being 

 closed b}' plugs or rotating rings. 



In a few cases wind instruments are found so long that the player's 



'Land, Travaux <le la & Congres des Orientalistes, 1883, pp. 107-114, or Ellis, 

 •lournal of the Society of Artw, XXXIII, IsSo, j). 502. 



