The Syrinx, or Pan's pipes, has been already referred to, and may be described as composed of a certain number of flute-pipes, the sounds being produced by directing the breath against the sharp edge of each pipe. Plato considered the use of the Syrinx lawful in rural life, but he condemned the more richly-toned flute. The shepherd's pipe belongs to the Oboe family, inasmuch as it is sounded by means of a reed, an artifice of great antiquity. We do not know anything about its early development, but Chaldean shepherds played upon similar instruments nearly 2000 years ago, while watching their flocks by night, and Neapolitan peasants still play, in memory of those shepherds, upon similar rustic reed pipes, the Zampogna or Cennamella, for nine days preceding the great Church festivals of the Madonna Immaculata and the Nativity. These primitive oboes must be of very great antiquity. It is probable, the shepherd's pipe was at first a smaller reed inserted in a larger one, or the larger one was slit for a reed vibrator, as boys cut them now. The lowland Scotch shepherd's pipe is made of horn, the cover for the reed being also horn. The principle of a reservoir of air to furnish a supply for pipes, the primitive conception of the organ, was known to the Romans and the original form of bagpipe was the Tibia Utricularis. In course of time no instrument was more popular throughout Europe than the bagpipe. Varieties of it (Plates IV. and V.), including specimens of the Cornemuse and Musette, show the modern forms of this now despised instrument. The principle of the drone-bass, common to the Bagpipe and Hurdy-gurdy (Plate XXX.), must have been of universal acceptance in Europe before the knowledge of counterpoint became general. The peculiar scale of intervals of the great Highland bagpipe adds much to what is characteristic in the tones of the instrument. Its divergence of intonation may be due to the incompetency of the instrument-maker to determine the true distances for boring the lateral holes. If so, we must be lenient with him, for even now, with our perfection of mechanical appliances, the boring is not above question. But, of course, accuracy is more nearly attained than it has been at any previous time, even the earlier years of the present century. Another and a more attractive hypothesis for the Highland bagpipe scale, derives its mean or neuter thirds, neither major nor minor, from a Syrian scale, still found at Damascus, and attributes its presence in Europe to the pipes having been brought, like rebecs, rebabs, and lutes, by returning Crusaders, whose wondering admiration for Saracenic Art is well known. It seems scarcely likely that the music would not also have touched them, possessed as it was of a special charm due to ages of Persian and Arabic cultivation. There is abundant evidence in the present day as to the favour shown in the East for those indefinite thirds, which may originate from an ideally equal scale of seven intervals