Again, some nations which have the diatonic order of intervals deviate slightly from it by habitually intoning some particular interval in a higher or lower pitch than it occurs in our tempered system. For instance, careful observers have noticed that the Swiss peasants in singing their popular airs are naturally inclined to intone the interval of the Fourth sharper than it sounds on the pianoforte. Thus, in C-major it is raised so as to give almost the impression of _F sharp_. This peculiarity is supposed to have arisen from the Alphorn, a favourite instrument of the Swiss, on which the interval of the Fourth, like on a trumpet, is higher than it is in our Diatonic Scale. No doubt many peculiarities of this kind are traceable to the construction of certain popular instruments. This is perhaps more frequently observable among uncivilized nations than with Europeans. Professor Lichtenstein, who, during his travels in South Africa, in the beginning of the present century, investigated the music of the Hottentots, asserts that these people sing the interval of the Third slightly lower than the Major Third, but not so low as the Minor Third; and the Fifth and Minor Seventh likewise lower than in our intonation. He found that the same deviations from our intervals exist on the _Gorah_, a favourite stringed instrument of the Hottentots. Other peculiarities of the kind are more difficult to explain. In the Italian popular songs of the peasantry, for instance, we not unfrequently meet with the Minor Second, where to an ear accustomed to our Minor Scale it appears like a whimsical substitution for the Major Second. It occurs, however, only occasionally. When it is used, the scale is as follows; the Seventh being Major in ascending, and Minor in descending:-- [Music] In some instances such peculiarities have evidently been derived, as has already been stated, from the series of tones produced on a popular instrument. But there are many instances in which the tones yielded by the instrument have been purposely adopted in the construction of the instrument from the previously existing popular scale of the vocal music. Thus, it may possibly be that, as some inquirers maintain, the pentatonic character of certain Irish airs has its origin in the primitive scale of the ancient rural bagpipe of Celtic races, or, as others believe, in the simple construction of the ancient Irish harp;--on the other hand, the Chinese and Javanese, as we have seen, contrive in the construction of their instruments to obtain the pentatonic scale on which their vocal music is usually founded.