The task of organizing and perfecting so complete and infallible a scheme must have been immense. In the first place the distance, so to speak, between each tone of which the human voice is capable was to be defined by certain laws and rules, and represented by distinctive marks. Then the length or duration of each tone in any given air was to be marked separately or in junction with other tones, without deranging the qualities of any or detracting from the harmony of the whole. Then were to be encountered the difficulties incidental to changes of the key-note or tone. On discovering that the human voice, after executing seven notes, among which are five tones and two semitones, produced, in ascending to the eighth, a tone exactly similar to the first, it was necessary to construct a scale of keys which would always place the two semitones in exactly the same position, and in the same relation to the full tones. Lastly, and perhaps more wonderful than all, a proper and minute division of TIME was to be effected. That inherent appreciation of what musicians term “time,” which almost every human being possesses naturally, but which few understand, and none can explain, was to be expressed and defined. Divisions and subdivisions were to be demonstrated and made clear. This was the task of tasks. Savages, who never heard of the existence of such a science as music, are known to clap their hands in unison at certain measurable periods in their wild songs. They observe the law of musical time, without having the slightest conception of what time is. Nor are we much better now. We can write time as well as tune, but we know not now, nor have we yet been able to analyze or detect the instinct which teaches us, as it does the Savages, at what periods of any given air we should mark time. Yet thousands of persons, singing together, will “_beat_” at the same instant. No one knows why or wherefore it should be so. We only feel that it is so, and that human ingenuity has enabled us to write and otherwise to mark time. The order of intellect, which first discovered the means of doing even this little, must have been very high indeed.