408 
PLIISY's 2^ATUiiAL HISTORY. 
[Book X\'I. 
an usage which prevailed down to the time of Antigenides, the 
musician, and while flute-plapng was of a more simple style. 
Eeing thus prepared, the reeds became fit for use in the course 
of a few years. At that period even the reed required consi- 
derable seasoning to render it pliable, and to be instructed, as 
it were, in the proper modulation of its sounds ; the mouth- 
piece and stops being naturally contracted, and so producing 
a music better adapted to the theatrical taste of the day. 
But in later times, when the music became more varied, and 
luxury began to exercise its influence upon the musical taste, 
it became the general usage to cut the reeds before the summer 
solstice, and to make them fit for use at the end of three 
months; the stops and mouth-piece being found, when the 
reeds were cut at that period, to be more open and better 
adapted for the modifications of sound : it is in this state that 
the reed is used for similar purposes at the present day. In 
those times it was a very general persuasion also, that every 
pipe ought to have the tongne of its own mouth-piece cut 
from the same reed as itself, and that a section from the part 
nearest the root was best adapted to form the left-handed 
flute,^^ and from the part adjoining the top the right-handed 
one : those reeds, too, were considered immeasurably superior, 
which had been washed by the waters of Cephisus itself. 
At the present day the sacrificial pipes used by the Tuscans 
are made of box- wood, while those employed at the games are 
made of the lotus,^^ the bones of the ass, or else silver. The 
fowler's reeds of the best quality are those of Panormus,^^ 
and the best reeds for fishing-rods come from Abarita in 
Africa.*^ 
CHAP. 67. THE VINE-DEESSERS' REEI). 
The reed is employed in Italy more particularly, as a sup- 
^■^ LinguHs. 
4^ The words ^'dextrae" and " sinistrse," denote the treble and the bass 
flutes ; it is thought by some, because the former were held with the right 
hand, and the latter with the left. Two treble or bass flutes were occasi- 
onally played on at the same time. 
46 See B. xiii. c. 32. 
47 These were of the variety Zeugites, previously mentioned. 
^ Fee suggests, that what he mentions here may not have been a reed 
at all, but one of the cyperaceous plants, the papyrus, perhaps. 
