The reader is probably aware that in one of the various hypotheses which have been advanced respecting the Asiatic origin of the American Indians China is assigned to them as their ancient home. Some historians suppose them to be emigrants from Mongolia, Thibet, or Hindustan; others maintain that they are the offspring of Phœnician colonists who settled in central America. Even more curious are the arguments of certain inquirers who have no doubt whatever that the ancestors of the American Indians were the lost ten tribes of Israel, of whom since about the time of the Babylonian captivity history is silent. Whatever may be thought as to which particular one of these speculations hits the truth, they certainly have all proved useful in so far as they have made ethnologists more exactly acquainted with the habits and predilections of the American aborigines than would otherwise have been the case. For, as the advocates of each hypothesis have carefully collected and adduced every evidence they were able to obtain tending to support their views, the result is that (so to say) no stone has been left unturned. Nevertheless, any such hints as suggest themselves from an examination of musical instruments have hitherto remained unheeded. It may therefore perhaps interest the reader to have his attention drawn to a few suggestive similarities occurring between instruments of the American Indians and of certain nations inhabiting the eastern hemisphere. We have seen that the Mexican pipe and the Peruvian syrinx were purposely constructed so as to produce the intervals of the pentatonic scale only. There are some additional indications of this scale having been at one time in use with the American Indians. For instance, the music of the Peruvian dance _cachua_ is described as having been very similar to some Scotch national dances; and the most conspicuous characteristics of the Scotch tunes are occasioned by the frequently exclusive employment of intervals appertaining to the pentatonic scale. We find precisely the same series of intervals adopted on certain Chinese instruments, and evidences are not wanting of the pentatonic scale having been popular among various races in Asia at a remote period. The series of intervals appertaining to the Chiriqui pipe, mentioned page 61, consisted of a semitone and two whole tones, like the _tetrachord_ of the ancient Greeks.