

LIKE THE SYRINX OF THE ANCIENTS. 127 
What the Yogel was has been disputed ; but Parkuursr explains it to be a 
wind instrument of several pipes. The ~aarngo of the Septuagint is, by several 
commentators, said to be a wind instrument, or “sort of flute used in churches ;” 
not the modern psaltery, which is a trapezoidal flat box, with 15 pairs of strings 
mounted on two bridges, and played with two crooked sticks. 
The invention of the modern organ is a subject of dispute; for few critics 
will receive S# Crcri1A as the inventor of that noble instrument, although Rar- 
FAELLO has introduced the syrinx in his grand picture of that saint in allusion to 
this fable. It is of considerable antiquity, however, and it will be sufficient here 
to remark, that the organ itself is only an adaptation of the more ancient syrinx 
to keys, and an artificial blast of air; and its pipes are tuned on the principle of 
its venerable prototype. 
The ancients seem, however, to have possessed an instrument somewhat in 
principle resembling the modern organ, in so far as it consisted of several pipes 
attached to a box, which contained compressed air. In the instrument briefly 
and obscurely noticed by Virruvius, who lived about the commencement or a little 
before the Christian era, the air seems to have been compressed by forcing mater 
into a brazen box, that communicated with the pipes. The instrument was termed 
by the inventor, Cerresrsius of Alexandria, tigaux¢; and is attempted to be figured 
from the description in the Italian translation of Virruvius by Barsato, Patriarch 
of Aquileia. 
I am indebted to my friend Mr W. Cape x for the notice of a coin of NERo, 
in the British Museum, on which an’ ogya0», or perhaps tagavius, is figured. It seems 
to be the instrument alluded to by Sueronius, in the life of Nero—* reliquam 
diei partem per organa hydraulica, novi et ignoti generis circumduxit.” There 
is a dissertation on the Hydraulis in the Gottingen Transactions. 
The organ or psaltery of the book of Genesis, I believe, then, to have been 
the syrinx ; an instrument with which we may reasonably suppose Moss to have 
been familiar, as ancient authors generally agree in ascribing the invention of 
the weyré, and of the single flute, pours, to the Egyptians. 
Both flute and syrinx are mentioned by Homer as known to the Trojans— 
*AvAwY Sugrylay ° evorny ojucedov 7° cybgcmray ; 
so that, without doubt, the syrinx is an instrument of very great antiquity; and 
we know that it has been most widely diffused among ancient nations. 
Among the Arabs it is in use at the present day. In Kamprer’s History of 
Japan, two forms of a syrinx of twelve unequal reeds, used by that people, as 
also some singular Japanese flutes, are figured in Tab. xxxi., A. E. G. J. 
From time immemorial, it has been in use among the inhabitants of the 
Alps; and most of the performers on the organetio, who perambulate Europe, 
bring it from the Italian cantons in the vicinity of the Lake of Como. 
