















Bi 
LIKE THE SYRINX OF THE ANCIENTS. 125 
holes. Their obvious use is to receive a cord, for the convenience of holding the 
instrument more firmly, or of hanging it up. 
There are eight pipes or cylindrical tubes scooped out in the thickness of the 
stone: they have a diameter of about 0°3 inch, and rise in a sort of general neck 
three-fourths of an inch above the body of the instrument, forming a horizontal 
connected series of tubes, which, however, have no communication with each other. 
Their upper edges, on one side, are slightly thinned, which, no less than the orna- 
ments on the side, shew what part of the tube was pressed against the lips. 
These circumstances prove that the Peruvian instrument, like the organetto, 
was held by the player with the longest tubes, or lowest notes, toward his right 
hand. The depth of the tubes was carefully measured, and is as follows :— 
No. Inches. No. Inches. 
Tr = 4:90 5. — 2°45 
22 — 4:50 6. = 2-85 
3. = 4:12 vp = 2:00 
4. — 3°50 8. = 1:58 
Though these measurements do not seem quite to accord with the usual propor- 
tionate length of pipes with regular musical intervals, they seem to have been 
adjusted from experimental trials by the maker; and I used every precaution in 
measuring them with a delicate instrument. 
In the common organetto, the tubes are portions of the Spanish reed (Avwndo 
Donaz), of unequal lengths. These are usually 16 in number; and as each pipe 
differs from the next a note of the ordinary musical scale, the compass of the 
instrument, with the usual mode of blowing it, is two octaves. These tubes are 
open at both ends; and the instrument is tuned by the introduction of a piece of 
cork, which is pushed farther down when the tone of the note is too sharp, and 
pushed farther up when the tone is too flat. The key-note is first pitched from 
- some other instrument, or by a tuning-fork; and the other pipes are adjusted 
by the ear from the key-note. 
In the Peruvian instrument the tone of the notes appears to have been ad- 
justed with considerable skill, by careful drilling of the stone; and this has been 
done by means of a circular drill with cutting edges and a hollowed centre, as 
the bottom: of the holes still shews. The truth of the tones shews that this 
boring has not been done without repeated trials of the effect; and there is no 
reason to doubt that the Peruvian artist knew also how to amend the tone by 
stopping the bottom of the pipe when necessary. 
The Peruvian instrument has eight notes, in the ordinary way of blowing it ; 
but, by contracting the orifice of the mouth, and by pressing the orifice of the 
. tube toward the lip, an octave to the first is obtained from each note, and if the 
force of the blast be very strong at the same time, a third octave may be ob- 
tained: so that, inthe hands of an expert performer, the instrument had consider- 
able compass. In this paper, however, we shall confine our notice to what may 
VOL. XX. PART I. 2L 
