The question of physical and mental heredity is one which at the present day not only challenges the investigation of the learned, but is actively discussed in the wider circles of cultivated society. No better example can be cited in support of the affirmative side of this question, than the family of Johann Sebastian Bach, in which, for the space of not less than two hundred and fifty years, musical talent of a high order was transmitted from one generation to another. Displaying itself for the first time in the sixteenth century, the gift grew more and more marked until it reached its culminating point in the subject of this memoir, but began to dwindle in his posterity and disappeared entirely in the last descendant of the race, who died in Berlin in 1845. For a long time the erroneous idea was almost universally accepted, that the Bachs originated in Hungary and had emigrated to Thuringia in the second half of the sixteenth century. In reality, however, the family was of pure German extraction and had established itself before the time of the Reformation on the northeastern slope of the Thuringian forest. Wechmar, a village in the neighborhood of Gotha, was the residence of the immediate progenitors of Sebastian Bach, and the first of these concerning whose musical proclivities we have any information were Veit and Caspar Bach. The former had learned the trade of a baker and miller, and, while absent on his travels, he took occasion to visit Hungary, but soon returned to his native village. Here, when the labors of the day were ended, he devoted himself to playing on the zither for amusement. Hans Bach, his son, born about 1580, adopted music as a profession, after having received instruction from the town musician of Gotha, Caspar Bach, presumably his uncle, and, by way of subsidiary occupation, he plied the trade of a carpet-weaver. With his cherished violin for a companion, it was his habit to roam far and wide throughout Thuringia, making the strains of his instrument resound wherever a joyous company was found assembled. A jovial fellow, full of merry jests, he soon became universally popular in the region, and the musical importance of the Bach family was perceptibly increased through the inherited ability of his three sons, Johann, Christoph and Heinrich. Several musicians of note are also to be counted among the descendants of a brother of Hans, of whom Johann Ludwig Bach, who died in 1741 while occupying the position of Capellmeister in Meiningen, deserves special mention.