MUSIC AND SCIENCE. 
177 
they have been almost ludicrously inconsistent with the 
musical theory of their time, and have never been consistent 
with one another. The musical interval between notes on 
two adjacent lines is sometimes a major third and sometimes 
a minor one; on the staff 8 lines and 7 spaces span two 
octaves; on the keyboard 8 white keys span one octave; the 
white keys of the keyboard give the diatonic major scale of 
C and this only, although since Bach the theorist and the 
tuner have maintained the equality of the twelve keys; so 
the student has to learn 12 ways of fingering each chord, 
instead of one only, as with the practical Janko-keyboard, 
two of which have been owned here in Washington. As 
for notation, disregarding the trivial proposals for colored 
notes and for heads of various shapes and schemes for some 
particular instrument, analogous to the old lute-tablature, 
only two plans for improvement deserve notice: one, to use 
12 lines to the octave, a plan not approved by musicians, but 
extremely convenient for the scientific student of scales of 
Oriental peoples and of non-diatonic music; the other, the 
use of the initials of the syllables, do, re, mi, etc. ; such music 
can be set up in any printing office, and the system, known 
as the Tonic-Sol-Fa system, has been so perfected that in 
England there is a great amount of music, new and old, 
available in this notation and it has contributed much to the 
success of the great choral societies and their festivals. In the 
excellent text-book on physics of Jude and Gossin this nota- 
tion is used. 
Turning to instruments, a comparison of those in present 
use with those in museums shows how the soft-toned older 
ones have been driven out by those more powerful. The iron- 
frame piano, invented in this country and severely con- 
demned by European musicians in the Exposition reports of 
40 or 50 years ago for its noisy unmusical tone, has tri- 
umphed everywhere, and is now still louder than of old, 
though of more even and perhaps better tone-quality. Recent 
improvement in the organ has been in the way of pneumatic 
and electric actions, and especially in the construction and 
voicing of pipes. In smaller instruments it has been mainly 
