PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. 523 



it, and their harp, or lyre, had only throe strings; the Grecian lyre had 

 only seven strings, and was very small, being- held in one hand; the Jew- 

 ish trumpets, that made the walls of Jericho fall down, were only rams' 

 horns. Tlieir flute was the same as the Egyptian, They had no other 

 instrumental music, except by percussion, of which the greatest boast 

 made was the psaltery, a small triangular harp or lyre, with wire strings, 

 and struck with an iron needle or stick; tlieir sackbut was something like 

 a bagpipe; the timbrel was a tambourine, and the dulcimer was a horizon- 

 tal harp with wire strings, and struck with a stick like the psaltery. 



CLASSIFICATlb>f OF MODERN INSTRUMENTS. 



The limits of this paper forbid our mentioning even the names of the 

 many musical instruments now in use.~ Howevei', there are certain broad 

 distinctions between them, which enable us to classify them, hot with 

 reference to the mode by which they arc played, but to the manner in 

 which the sounds are produced. The vibrations of a column of air in a 

 tube produce the sounds of those which we are accustomed to term wind 

 instruments; while the vibrations of a stretched cord or wire, are the source 

 of sounds in the numerous instruments of the violin class, as also of the 

 piano-forte. But a period of about thirty or forty years has witnessed the 

 introduction of a great number and variety of instruments in which the 

 sounding body is a metallic spring, fixed at one end, and free to vibrate at 

 the other. Thus they have been designated free-7~eed instruments, 



HISTORY OF FREE-REED INSTRUMENTS. 



Who was the inventor of this free-reed, although we have made diligent 

 search and inquiry, we are as yet unable to state positively. That some- 

 thing of the kind had been known for ages to musicians, is evident by the 

 Jews harp, in which a metallic tongue is struck in a peculiar way by the 

 finger, and at the same time breathed upon; but in this case one spring is 

 made to yield several notes by altering the form of the cavity of the mouth. 

 It is also known that organ-builders had for many years occasionally used 

 a metal tongue as the vibrating body in those organ-pipes termed reed- 

 pipes, and M. Grenie, an eminent musical mechanic of France, had adopted 

 a form of tongue in a measure similar to that now used in the melodeon, 

 accordeon and instruments of this class. We may also mention the mu- 

 sical "snuff-box" as an instrument in which the sounds are elicited from 

 metallic springs. It is probable that other attempts to produce music by 

 this means could be cited. But it is only since about the year 1825 that a 

 series of instruments under the names of melodeon, seolian, harmonica, me- 

 lophene, symphonion, seraphine, accordeon, concertina, reed organ, etc., 

 have been brought before the public, and have demonstrated the variety 

 of ways in which sounds may be educed from metallic springs, or as they 

 should be properly termed, free-reeds. 



In an article in " Tiie Musical World and Times," some years since, the 

 invention of this class of instruments is claimed for Mr. James U. Bazin, an 

 ingenious musician and mechanic of Canton, Mass. The account referred 

 to contains the following: — "Late in the year of 1821 some young men 

 from a neigiiboring town brought a small, round brass pipe, with the letter 

 A marked ou it, and a piece of thin brass screwed on one side; which brass 



