3<5 



THE HUMAN SPECIES 



ments of the savage races of to-day, would require a large book 

 to itself. 



According to Darwin, it must be generally assumed that 

 singing is the basis or the source of man's instrumental music. 

 I have considerable doubts, however, as to the correctness of 

 this assumption, and believe it to be highly probable that the 

 latter is quite independent of the former. 



As, in their games, our children, and the children of all 

 nations, will produce a note by blowing down a reed, or by 

 tapping a pot, a vessel or a board covering a hole, obtain 

 further sounds owing to their resonance ; or as, when they 

 pull on a stretched cord, they are surprised at the duration of 



the vibrations, so the prehistoric 

 men arrived at the construction 

 of instruments by dint of experi- 

 ment in playing. Pipes made 

 of the phalanges of the reindeer 

 bored with a hole (Fig. 181), 

 were found in the palaeolithic 

 settlements in France and in 

 the Swiss pictures. Lartet has 

 described two flutes made from 

 the bones and horn of reindeer 

 which were found in palaeolithic 

 caves in France. In the same 

 way flutes could be made of the 

 long bones of birds simply bored 

 with holes in them, and like many flutes of elderwood or pieces 

 of reed, may have rotted away in these caves. It may be 

 assumed as very probable that such wind instruments were 

 first made for children, and by children out of willow, or reeds, 

 which are easily cut. Very likely this was first done by the 

 neolithic dwellers in the lake villages where they were sur- 

 rounded by reeds. We do not know whether the palaeolithic 

 hunters blew upon horns taken from the bisons and bulls which 

 they hunted, nor do we know whether they possessed wooden 

 drums covered with hides like modern savage races ; if this was 

 the case they must long since have decayed like the wooden 

 pipes and flutes. We possess a single drum of clay (Fig. 182) 



FIG. 180. Hind leg of Stenobothrus 

 pratorum. (After Landois.) r, 

 the ridge by which the sound is 

 produced. Below are the teeth 

 of the ridge magnified. 



