The essential feature of Arabian dancing was the graphic production of pictorial episodes, in rich harmonious lines of the body, sensuous grace of the poses and sinuous elegance of movement. A special emphasis was placed upon the exhibition of the most perfect womanly beauty. To complete the task of architectural perfection an Arabic dancer was taught to study carefully the geometric laws of nature and eliminate the crudities acquired in everyday life. The principal musical instrument of the Moorish dancers was the African guitar, which was their national invention. Most of the great Arab dancers were women, who preferred to dance without a masculine partner. Ordinarily they danced to the music of two or three differently tuned guitars, and only on festival occasions or in appearances at court was the music supplied by an orchestra of ten or more. Already the Arabs had their musical notation, set in three colors: red, green, and blue. Fragments of their mediæval music notation were recently discovered by a French scholar and were successfully deciphered. It appears that many of the dance melodies still in use in Spain are of Moorish descent. The Kinneys,[A] who seemingly have made a study of Spanish and modern Arab dancing, write of it graphically, as follows: [A] Troy and Margaret West Kinney: The Dance (New York, 1914). ‘Of formulated dances the Arab has few, and those no more set than are the words of our stories: the point must not be missed, but we may choose our own vocabulary. In terms of the dance, the Arab entertainer tells stories; in the case of known and popular stories she follows the accepted narrative, but improvises the movements and poses that express it, exactly as though they were spoken words instead of pantomime. Somewhat less freedom necessarily obtains in the narration of dance-poems than in the recital of trifling incidents; but within the necessary limits, originality is prized. In the mimetic vocabulary are certain phrases that are depended upon to convey their definite meanings. New word-equivalents, however, are always in order, if they can stand the searching test of eyes educated in beauty and minds trained to exact thinking.