4 88 



NA TURL 



{March 26, 1885 



to this question. They look as if they were outgrowths 

 from the margins of the carpellary leaf, and I should 

 probably have considered them to be so were it not for 

 certain appearances in the ovules to which I proceed now 

 to allude. In the free carpels, in the flowers I examined, 

 no ovules were apparent, but only the petaloid plates just 

 described ; but in those cases where the carpels were com- 

 bined into a trilocular ovary, the ovules were present on 

 each side of the ventral suture, not indeed in a perfect 

 condition, but in a more or less abortive state, consisting 

 merely of a funicle and an irregular plate of cellular tissue 

 more or less blue in colour, the only representative of the 

 coats of the ovule, while the nucellus, so far as I could see, 

 was entirely wanting. Still, the general appearance was 

 that of imperfectly developed, pendulous, anatropal ovules. 

 Petalody, and especially phyllody, of the ovules is not 

 a very uncommon phenomenon among Dicotyledons, and 

 their peculiarities have been discussed at length in 

 numerous classical treatises, to which it is not necessary 

 here to refer. The corresponding changes in the ovules 

 of Monocotyledons must be very much less frequent. 

 There are none recorded in my " Vegetable Teratology," 

 in which I endeavoured to render the bibliographical 

 notices as complete as possible up to the time of 

 publication, and there are none that I have hitherto 

 been able to find in any subsequently issued publication. 

 It is quite certain then that ovular changes must be of 

 extremely rare occurrence in Monocotyledons. Another 

 point remains to be mentioned — the ovules or their 

 abortive representatives were decidedly pendulous from 

 the ventral suture, but in the same carpel it often hap- 

 pened that two flat, tongue-shaped, petaloid processes 

 projected one on each side vertically upwards from the 

 base of the ventral suture, but quite free from it above 

 their point of origin. These may be the representatives 

 of ovules in spite of their different direction, for a different 

 position of the ovules in the same carpel is by no means 

 an uncommon circumstance, though I am not aware that 

 it has ever been observed in Dianella. Naturally one is 

 disposed to connect them with the petaloid plates project- 

 ing from the placenta above described ; but unfortunately 

 I was unable to find any intermediate condition between 

 the petal-like plates attached to the placenta for its whole 

 length and those which arose from the base of the carpel 

 free throughout their entire length. It is to be hoped 

 that this variety may have been introduced into our con- 

 servatories, where, independently of the opportunity for 

 more complete investigation that would thus be afforded, 

 it would be welcomed for the brilliancy of its masses of 

 flowers. Maxwell T. Masters 



MUSICAL SCALES OF VARIOUS NATIONS » 

 AT the Society of Arts yesterday, Sir F. Abel, C.B., 

 - r ^- F.R.S., Chairman of the Council, in the chair. 

 Mr. Alexander J. Ellis, F.R.S., read a paper on "The 

 Musical Scales of Various Nations," illustrated by- 

 playing the scales on his Dichord (a double Monochord, 

 corrected so as to give the true intervals) and five English 

 concertinas, specially tuned by Messrs. Lachenal, which 

 also enabled him to play strains in some of the scales, 

 and by various native instruments lent for the purpose by 

 Rajah Ram Pal Singh, Mr. A. J. Hipkins, and Mons. V. 

 Mahillon. The nations represented were chiefly those of 

 ancient Greece, Arabia, India, Java, China, and Japan, 

 with rapid glances at subordinate places. The relation to 

 his former paper on the History of Musical Pitch was 

 this, that whereas that paper gave the variations in the 

 pitch of the European tuning note, the present endea- 

 voured to discover the system by which different nations 

 tuned. This was obtained when possible by theory, 

 taking as authorities Prof. Helmholtz for ancient Greece ; 

 Prof. J. P. N. Land, of Leyden, for Arabia and Persia, 



1 Contributed by the Autli r 



and Rajah Sourindro Mohun Tagore for India. When 

 theory was not possible, results were obtained by measur- 

 ing with his series of ioo tuning-forks the pitch of the 

 notes produced by instruments of fixed tones (as the wood 

 and metal bar harmonicons in Java and elsewhere), or 

 those produced by native players on other instruments (as 

 by Rajah Ram Pal Singh for' India, the musicians of the 

 Chinese Court of the Health Exhibition, and of the 

 Japanese village). In obtaining these pitches Mr. Ellis 

 was materially aided by the delicate ear of Mr. A. J. 

 Hipkins, who most kindly cooperated with him in every 

 way. From the pitches thus obtained, the intervals were 

 expressed in hundredths of an equal Semitone (for brevity 

 called cents) of which 1200 make an Octave, 702 a perfect 

 Fifth, 498 a perfect Fourth, 386 and 316 perfect major 

 and minor Thirds. Then these were plotted down on 

 the movable fingerboards of the Dichord, and the scales 

 were made audible. Occasionally forks were constructed 

 of the pitch observed, and from them concertinas were 

 constructed, and thus the most unusual intervals were 

 reproduced to the ear, and their exact relation to those 

 on a well-tuned piano rendered sensible to the eye. After 

 rapidly exhibiting the ancient and later Greek scales, Mr. 

 Ellis turned to Arabia, for which Prof. Land had furnished 

 the data in his Gamme Arabe read before the Oriental 

 Congress at Leyden. This showed first the Pythagorean 

 scale, and then its modification by the lutist Zalzal, 1000 

 years ago, whereby a fret was introduced between those 

 for E flat, 294 cents, and E, 40S cents (supposing the open 

 string to be C), producing the neutral Third of 355 cents, 

 so that the scale became C o, D 204, E neutral 355^498 

 cents, followed by the same a Fourth higher, and by a 

 whole tone. This was the system prevalent at the time 

 of the Crusaders, who seem to have brought it to Europe 

 in the shape of the bagpipe, and it is still preserved on 

 good highland bagpipes (as those of Glen and Macdonald) 

 as was proved by taking the scale of one kindly played by 

 Mr. C. Keene, the artist. After the time of the Crusades, 

 Arab theorists, scandalised at giving up the series ot 

 Fourths to produce the neutral Thirds and Sixths, carried 

 on the system of Fourths to 17 notes, using 384 and 882 

 cents for Zalzal's 355 and 853 cents, but preserving his 

 name. So came about the mediaeval Arabic system of 

 17 notes to the Octave, from which 12 scales were con- 

 structed, of which Mr. Ellis was able to play 10 on one of 

 his concertinas. But Zalzal's system did not die out, and 

 in 1 S49 Eli Smith, an American Missionary at Damascus, 

 translated a treatise by Meshaqah, a learned contem- 

 porary musician, showing that it led to the division of the 

 Octave into 24 Quarter-tones, with the normal scale of o, 

 200, 350, 500, 700, 850, 1000, and 1200 cents, while the 

 player was allowed, in certain cases, to increase or 

 diminish the interval by 50 cents, or a Quarter-tone. Eli 

 Smith gives 95 Arabic airs in this system, of which a few 

 were played on a special concertina. The two important 

 points of Arabic music were the introduction of the 

 neutral Third and Sixth, and the variation of normal 

 notes by a Quarter-tone, both thoroughly inharmonic. 



In India the ancient scale was the same as our just 

 major scale, with the exception of the Sixth, which was a 

 comma sharper. Hence it had C o, D 204, E 3S6, F 498, 

 G 702, A 906, B 10S8, C 1200 cents. But then the major 

 Tones were considered to be divided into 4 degrees, the 

 minor Tones into 3, and the Semitone into 2 degrees, 

 and tones were depressed by 1, 2, or 3, and in 

 one case F, raised by 2 or 3 degrees, and thus the 

 12 changing notes were produced, answering to our 

 5 chromatic notes, with 7 notes altered by a de- 

 gree from them, equivalent to the similar process in 

 the Arabic scale. In modern times the scale was simplified 

 by dividing the distance C to F on the finger-board into 

 9 equal parts, and from F toe (the Octave) into 13 equal parts, 

 and then dividing the 22 degrees among the notes thus : 

 (where the figure before the note indicates the number ot 



