54 SECTION PHYSICS. 



would not strike a musician as being different from others, has most 

 of the important quarter tones on it. Simply because, by doubling a 

 key in one place, and by utilising the different fingerings which are 

 upon the instrument, if they could only be attended to, you can get 

 nearly all the quarter tones. I shall be happy to show it afterwards to 

 anyone who knows the mechanism of a clarionet. Lastly, there comes 

 the large department of brass instruments. And here it seemed, for a 

 long time, to be rather a hopeless question, especially as to valve 

 instruments. They are very powerful, certainly a great addition to 

 our sum total of means for producing musical sounds. But they were 

 always considered to be very incorrect. This, which is a recent 

 invention of my friend, Mr. Bassett, is a trumpet which possesses, to 

 all intents and purposes, the ordinary mechanism of a trumpet, but not 

 quite the same. The third valve, instead of lowering the pitch, as it 

 does in the ordinary trumpet, has a separate function. The first valve 

 lowers the pitch a major tone ; the second valve lowers the pitch a 

 diatonic semitone. The third valve raises the pitch of any note, pro- 

 duced by the first by the interval of a comma ; therefore it has been 

 termed the comma trumpet. In other words, the first and third valves 

 together, lower the pitch a minor tone, and when the first is used 

 together with the second valve or alone, it gives, of course, other modi- 

 fied intervals, resulting in the production of a more correct musical scale 

 than has yet been obtained on any valve instrument, with very little 

 alteration of the usual fingering. It appears to me that this excellent 

 system, which has hardly yet attracted the notice of professional 

 musicians, ought to be applied to other instruments. Mr. Bassett is 

 here, and no doubt will, during the recess, play some notes and exhibit 

 the system. Here I beg to conclude for the moment, and can only 

 hope that the President will kindly allow Mr. Bosanquet to supplement 

 those parts which, as mathematician and acoustician, I am less com- 

 petent than he to undertake. 



The PRESIDENT : I beg to return your thanks to Dr. Stone for his 

 communication, and I will now call on Mr. Bosanquet to give us a 

 short account of his instruments, on the theory and practice of which 

 lie has been for some time experimenting. 



