A few years previous to Monsieur Savart’s researches M. Chanot--a naval officer, and a member of the distinguished family of violin-makers of that name, being compelled to leave the navy on account of his staunch Royalist predilections--had turned his attention to constructing guitar-shaped fiddles and violoncellos. These were also subjected to similar tests by the members of the Académie des Sciences and--as in the case of the Savart fiddle--pronounced to be superior to the instruments of Cremona. There were independent experts, however, who considered them faulty in tone and only to be regarded as curiosities. In the midst of diverse criticisms, these instruments found a market for a few years, the violins and violas fetching 300 francs, while 500 francs was the price demanded for the violoncellos. Those who desire to pursue the subject of vagaries, will find much to interest them in Mr Davidson’s “The Violin,” and Mr Heron Allen’s “Violin-making as it was and is”; sufficient for present purposes is it to know that such grotesqueness as eighteen stringed violins played with a bow and producing the combined effect of the violin, viola, violoncello and double-bass: the combination violin and violoncello with piano which can be played by one person: the melephone, which was nothing more than a concertina enclosed in a species of violoncello, and other such fallacies, have been relegated to the land of oblivion. Certain it is that the ancient viol-maker never dreamed of such horrors. Once in a way he attempted such a mild invention as a detachable neck, which could be unscrewed and placed inside the instrument through a door in the ribs, like the viola da gamba in the Donaldson Museum, but otherwise his methods, like his varnish, were so simple that he made no fuss about them. He saw no necessity for rushing into print, or taking out patents, or wrangling, or arguing. The traditions of his graceful craft were transmitted by word of mouth and practical demonstration to his pupils, and the pupils, living in an atmosphere of _lutherie_, sucked in the unwritten lore as naturally as the earth absorbs rain. What need to cry out the sky is blue, when all the world can see it!