66 Mr. Farey’s Letter on musical Intervals, &c. 
extended attention to what Professor Fisher has done, that 
1 am principally induced to make the present communica- 
tion ; relying with full confidence, on the candour of Pro- 
f and others of your Readers, who may interest 
themselves in this curious oe for excusing the freedom 
of the remarks I may make. 
practitioners of Music, both Professional and Ama- 
teur, almost universally, as also a sreat majority of the Teach- 
ers and Composers of Music, and even many of the Writers 
of * Treatises” (as they are here technically called) on the 
theory and practice of Composition and on Tuning, are 
well known to have been so very generally unacquainted 
with, or so inattentive to, any of the correct methods of de- 
fining, measuring and calculating the musical Intervals which 
occupied their attention, as to have in no ordinary degree 
excited the surprise of every one, who has compared these 
many able and ingenious Individuals, with. the cultivators 
of nearly every other of the branches of Science and polite 
or useful Arts amongst us; into which happily. correct 
netpens and. nomenclatures, and aceurate notations and 
calculating, — every thing which comes within the 
Eeitttion of quantity, is either eadaced and established, 
or is now in rapid progress towards this desirable end. 
_I was first led to make the above remarks, on the occa- 
sion of the seahishmons of the Choral Fund in this Me- 
tropolis, almost thirty years ago, and while I acted as its 
first Secretary, Librarian, &c. which brought me into ac- 
quaintance with numbers of the most eminent of the Charac- 
ters alluded to; with many of whom, and the successors, 
alas! of too many of them, { have continued to cultivate 
this acquaintance, and as often as opportunities offered, have 
conversed with them on the subjects, to which I am now 
alluding : from all which, and the concurrent experience of 
all such of my quainencess as unite a knowledge of 
Mathematics with that of the principles of Music, | have 
oe convinced, that as chief cause of the evil I am 
dep! Fag Oe x arisen from the very unnatural manner, €X- 
cept to al hich the ratios of the 
lengths of strings NB musical ‘Intervals, wah + a view to 
comparing or calculating the magnitude of such Intervals : 
and it is the same, with regar rd to the number of vibrations 
or pulses, made in a given time, by the sonorous body, or 
