66 Mr. Farey’s Letter on musical Intervals, &c. 
extended attention to what Professor Fisher has done, that 
{am principally induced to make the present communica- 
tion ; relying with full confidence, on the candour of Pro- - 
fessor F. and others of your Readers, who may interest 
themselves in this curious subject, for excusing the freedom 
of the remarks I may make. 
The practitioners of Music, both Professional and Ment 
ieur, almost universally, as also a great 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 aitention, as to have in no ordinary degree 
excited the surprise of every one, who has compared these 
many able and ingenious ivdeciduaic! with the cultivators 
of nearly every other of the branches of Science and polite 
or useful Arts amongst us; into which happily correct 
notions and nomenclatures, and accurate notations and 
modes of calculating, every thing which comes within the 
definition of quantity, is either introduced and established, 
or is now in rapid progress towards this desirable end. 
1 was first led to make the above remarks, om the occa- 
sion of the establishment of the Choral Fund in this Me- 
tropolis, almost thirty years ago, and while I acted as its 
first Serra Librarian, &c. which brought me into ac- 
quaintance with numbers of the most emment of the Charac- 
ters alluded to; with many of whom, and the successors, 
alas! of too many of them, I 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 Acquaintances, as unite a knowledge of 
Mathematics with that of the principles of Music, [ have 
long been convinced, that the chief cause of the evil I am 
deploring, has arisen from the very unnatural manner, ex- 
cept to Mathematical adepts, in which the ratios ‘of the 
lengths of strings define musical Intervals, with a view to 
comparing or calculating the magnitude of such Intervals : 
and it is the same, with regard to the number of obrations 
or pulses, made in a given time, by the sonorous body, or 
