The exclamation and interrogation point, are in language, what _Neumes_ were at first in music, they roughly sketched out the inflection of the voice. The connection between them, and our modern notation is very evident; in our musical notation the requirements of the eye, have been well attended to; not entirely perhaps, as regards the length of notes, but certainly in the matter of ascending and descending passages, etc.;[261] the old Greek notation, with its upturned and fragmentary letters, meant nothing to the untutored eye; but the _Neumes_ of the middle ages, were the first attempt to express a meaning _by their arrangement_. Thus the _tripunctum_ ({tripunctum}) would denote three notes ascending, though not which ones; it might mean C, D, E, or E, F, G, or F, G, A, do, re, mi, mi, fa, sol, fa, sol, la, etc., the _bipunctum_ ({bipunctum}) two ascending, or ({bipunctum}) descending notes; the _plica ascendens_ ({plica ascendens}) an upward spring of a third, etc. It being a system which was evolved by slow degrees, it is not astonishing that there are various signs, about which opinions differ. The system though seemingly barbarous, was in reality an improvement; although not developed so extensively as the Greek notation which preceded it, it bore the germ of a more natural style of musical characters. But the constant change of, and addition to the _Neumes_, bore evidence, that it was but a pathway to a more complete system. The next great reformer in music gave his attention to abolishing the uncertainty which clung around the _pneumata_. Hucbald, Monk of St. Amand, in Flanders, (born about 840, died 932,) made the first practical effort to fix notes permanently. To him is due the germ of the idea which afterwards culminated in the modern clefs and staff. He took (unfortunately) the Greek system for his starting point, and this led him into many errors, and much lessened the permanent value of his work. He took the tetrachord (or succession of four notes) as the foundation of music, but he applied it in a most strange manner; his scale was as follows:[262] G, A, B flat, C, D, E, F, G, A, B natural, C, D, E, F sharp, G, A, B, C sharp, it will be readily seen that the above scale contains some incongruities, which are precisely similar to those noticed in the music of the Hindoos; that is the octave comes out a semi-tone sharp; B natural being octave to B flat, F sharp to F, etc. Naturally, in singing it is not to be conceived that the singers took any such outlandish system as to substitute this for an octave, but it must have allowed great license to the singers, and the whole must have given rise to much ambiguity.