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Introductory Paper 



4. My succeeding remarks will be of a more practical 

 nature, as they were suggested by actual experiments ; tbe 

 results of which, however, have not been extensive enough 

 to justify publication. 



It will follow from observations already made, that no such 

 results have been arrived at by writers on Ceylon, as were 

 obtained by Lane, in his " Modern Egyptians." He gives a 

 few instances, in European notation, of Egyptian airs, includ- 

 ing the " call to prayer" at Cairo, the style of chanting the 

 Koran, and some specimens of secular songs. In attempting 

 such results in Ceylon, the very first difficulty would be, the 

 unsuitableness of the European musical scale to express the 

 exact nature of the sounds, which form the strains of native 

 melodies. This is, perhaps, not generally known. To 

 explain the reason would involve a consideration of the lead- 

 ing principle of musical acoustics, and of the theory of the 

 musical scale. But before doing so, a favourite speculation 

 must be dismissed. It is a favourite method on such enquiries 

 as the present, to speculate on the probable character of 

 Hebrew, ancient Egyptian, and Grecian music. This 

 course, though seemingly going to the root of the matter, 

 will give no practical results. I believe I am not incorrect, 

 in stating, that all certainty in the history of music dates 

 from the discovery of our modern notation. This may be 

 described, as, the system of designating musical sounds by 

 points, distributed on lines and the spaces between them ; 

 which system, when once acquired by a musician, enables 

 him to read melody and harmony, and to reproduce exactly 

 what has thus been written. This definition, I believe, will 

 at once exclude any ancient Eastern notation, as well as the 

 system of using prosodial feet. 



5. The application of the principles of musical-acoustics 

 to this investigation, may be illustrated as follows. We 



