270 Indian Musie. [March, 
other wind instruments. Several of these, now deposited in pub- 
lic museums, can be made to produce a series of notes in which 
the fourth and seventh are omitted, and certain authors have, 
therefore, reached the somewhat hasty conclusion that the Aztecs, 
Peruvians and other American peoples employed a peculiar scale 
of only five tones, to which they have given the name pentatonic, 
Instruments of percussion figured prominently in the religious 
ceremonies of the Aztecs, and the Auchued/, or huge drum, which 
was covered with the skins of serpents, could be heard fora dis- 
tance of several miles when sounded on the great temple of Mex- 
ico. The Aztecs also made creditable wind instruments of clay. 
In the excellent collection of Mexican antiquities gathered to- 
gether by the Hon. J. R. Poinsett and Mr. W. H. Keating in 
1830, and now deposited in the Academy of Natural Sciences at 
Philadelphia, are a number of earthenware flageolets measuring 
wb Yamin Instrument from Ometkepec. 
from six to nine inches in length and ornamented with brown ® 
red paint. The majority of these are furnished with four, = 
some with five holes. There are also in the same coll 
many small clay whistles, some of them being wrought ™ 
form of birds, serpents, heads of monsters and imaginary ie < 
tures of unsurpassable ugliness, They emit, in most 7 
clear, shrill sound when blown, though a few yield a pecul p : 
noise like that made by the sudden escape of steam. yer 
composed of two tubes placed side by side, and gives w 
distinct sounds. / os u 
Dr. Daniel G. Brinton has kindly furnished for this article!” 
From a drawing furnished by Dr 
a 
