[Illustration: Music] Al-la-ho ak-bar, Al-la - - - - ho ak-bar, ach ha-dou en-nâ la i-lah ell Al-lah. Ach ha-dou en-nâ. Mo-ham-med ra-soul Al-lah - - - - - Al-la-ho ak- bar - - - - la i-lah ell Al-lah. And the Hindoo _ragas_ and _mantranis_ offer further proof of the conserving examples of tradition. A curious custom among the Chinese of immemorial antiquity is that of attaching whistles weighing only a few grams to the tails of pigeons soon after they emerge from the shell, by means of fine copper wire. The whistles are of two kinds; bamboo, with from two to five tubes, or gourds, with sometimes as many as twenty-five apertures. All the whistles in a flock are tuned to a different pitch. As they fly about Pekin and other cities they fill the air with a sort of wind-blown music. It is interesting as a commentary on the Chinese national love of sweet sounds. A custom of the Mohammedan Orient is the use of the flute in services for the dead. Modern Arab mortuary hymns are sung to the accompaniment of the flute, and the employment of the instrument in this connection dates back to ancient times. It is customary in almost every occupation in the Orient to sing traditional songs while work is going on. The Arab camel-drivers have a melody of strange intonations and long-drawn-out sounds which may have come down from the days of Antar; the boatmen on the Nile, the _fellahin_ toiling on its banks, the ambulant peddlers of Oriental cities, all have their traditional airs or cries. Some are very poetic; the water carriers of Mecca sing when they dispense their wares: 'Paradise and forgiveness be the lot of him who gave you this water!’ When, in June, Arab boys offer bunches of fragrant pink jasmine buds, enclosed in fig-leaves, for sale in the streets of Kairowan, those who buy return to their work chanting in a quaint minor key: 'We render thanks to Allah for sending rain to make the flowers bloom.’ The Burmese love to thresh rice to the sound of music, and the Buddhist nuns in Japan solicit contributions by striking small metal gongs attached to their belt with little wooden hammers carried in their hands. The Hindoo palanquin-bearers, the Japanese rickshaw-men, the Chinese coolies and sampan-men, all have their characteristic songs, most of them traditional, for the East is slow to change. * * * * *