used), and the drum are the principal instruments, the "band," as distinct from the "drums" and "bugles," having in addition to drum and fifes clarinets (saxophones in France and Belgium) and saxhorns of all types. In Scottish regiments, and in a few isolated cases elsewhere, bagpipes provide the marching music. The importance of music on the march is attested further by the almost universal practice of singing or whistling marching songs, and even playing them on concertinas, &c., in the absence of the band and drums. 2. From _marche_, the French form of a common Teutonic word represented in English by "mark" (q.v.), a boundary or frontier region between two countries or districts. The word appears to have been first used in this sense in the 8th century, and the earliest "mark" or "march" districts were tracts of land on the borders of the Carolingian Empire. Wherever Charlemagne pushed forward the frontiers of the Frankish realm he provided for the security of his lands, new and old alike, by establishing mark districts on the borders. The defence and oversight of these were entrusted to special officers, afterwards called margraves, or counts of the mark, who usually enjoyed more extensive powers than fell to the lot of an ordinary count. It is at this time that we hear first of the Spanish mark (_marca hispanica_) and the Bavarian mark (_marca bajoariae_). These mark districts were practically obliterated during the reigns of the feeble sovereigns who succeeded Charlemagne, but the system was revived with the accession of Henry the Fowler to the German throne early in the 10th century and with a renewal of the work of conquering and colonizing the regions east of the Elbe, and in eastern Germany generally. Under Henry and his son, Otto the Great, marks were again set upon the borders of Germany, and this time the organization was more lasting. The mark districts increased in size and strength, especially those which fell under the dominion of an able and energetic ruler, and some of them became powerful states, retaining the name mark long after the original significance of the word had been forgotten. It is interesting to note that the two most important of the modern German states, Austria and Prussia, both had their origin in mark districts, the mark of Brandenburg, the nucleus of the kingdom of Prussia, being at first a border district to the east of the duchy of Saxony, and the east mark, or mark of Austria, being a border district of the duchy of Bavaria. In Italy march districts made their appearance about the same time as in other parts of the Frankish Empire. The best known of these is the march of Ancona, which with other marches and adjoining districts, was known later as the Marches, a province lying about the centre of Italy between the Apennines and the Adriatic Sea. After forming part of the states of the Church the Marches were united with the kingdom of Italy in 1860 (see MARCHES, THE).