The later emperors have all had long reigns, and left music in _status quo_, the last emperor Hien-fung being only remarkable for his constant drunkenness. Let us now examine more minutely the order of music which has inspired such disgust to European ears, and such rapture to the Chinese from the earliest ages down to the present time. CHAPTER XII. CHINESE MUSIC AND MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS. The Chinese have from the very earliest times divided musical sounds into eight classes, and imagined that in order to produce them, nature had formed eight kinds of sonorous bodies. They divided them as follows:— 1. The sound of skin, produced from the tanned skin, or parchment of various animals. 2. The sound of stone. 3. Of metal. 4. Of baked clay. 5. Of silk, used in the form of strings as we use cat-gut, or wire. 6. Of wood, used often in instruments of percussion. 7. Of bamboo, used in flutes. 8. Of calabash, a species of gourd, out of which a peculiarly constructed instrument was manufactured. Of the skins of animals, many different instruments are made, all of which may be designated under the general name of drums, but the Chinese possess various kinds of drums of all shapes and sizes.[105] The most ancient variety of these was the _Tou-kou_, which signifies earth drum, so called because its body was made of baked clay, over each end of which was drawn the skin. An instrument of this description was both fragile and unwieldy; its disadvantages soon caused the clay to be replaced by wood, out of which all subsequent drums were made, the size and shape being varied according to the uses for which they were destined. Nothing is said in the ancient writings as to what varieties of wood were used in the manufacture of the earliest drums, but tradition has it, that at first the wood of the cedar and mulberry, as also sandal wood, were the most used.