The Emperor Che Huang-ti B.C. 246 the destroyer of books came. He ordered the annihilation of all books with the exception of works on medicine, agriculture, and divination. The decree was obeyed as faithfully as possible by an uneducated soldiery, who made it a pretext for domiciliary visits, exactions, and pitiless destruction. Music books and instruments shared the same fate as every object which could give rise to remembrance of past times; and a long night of ignorance rested on the country to such an extent that at the rise of the Han dynasty the great music master Chi, whose ancestors had for generations held the same dignity, scarcely remembered anything about music but the noise of tinkling bells and dancers’ drums. I have possessed four of these little _Sheng_ organs (pronounced “sung”) and it became to me a fascinating problem how the instrument originated. I compared one with the other, and where one was imperfect, the other possessed the notes to perfect the scale. At that time but little was known of the instrument, for we had only some flowery accounts given in Chinese history, and one description of it very fully set out in Père Amiot’s work on the Chinese, published in Paris, 1780, in six vols. The description is found in the sixth volume, but I soon discovered that the good father had but very imperfect means at his command, and that the scale he gave was not to be relied upon. For my own satisfaction I was led to make a closer examination of the instrument, and to glean whatever particulars I could for the better understanding of the organ and its place in history.