the plate is fixed in its place with beeswax. Let us imagine our worker to live at this particular period of growth of a civilised community, when music was scarcely more than a chirping of birds, or the aimless sounds which arose as rhythmical ebullition in dancing; when musical art was personal, unformed and any system of musical sounds as yet unthought of. Such a time there must have been in the history of every early race. Always, as I imagine, that the instrument coming, before the system, originates that liking in the human sentiency which heredity and custom confirm. The peculiarity of Chinese music corroborates this notion of mine; for although, so far as we can tell, the structure of musical ears is the same—yet likings of the ear vary widely with the difference in race. One of the first needs of men in relation to one another in communities is a standard of measure of length, such as a cubit, a foot, etc. The oldest standard with the Chinese is the thumb’s breadth, and ten thumbs’ breadths make one Chinese foot; and they had a measure of millet seed, as we have our three barley corns making one inch. Our worker then had his measure of the foot, for that is the standard he sets out with for his longest pipe, from which all the rest originate. It is 9-7/8in. of our measure; and by the same custom the longest pipe of the twelve _lüs_ which are mythically attributed to the Yellow Emperor, is of like length. So the Chinese foot predetermined the standard both for the reed pipe of bamboo with a tongue of metal, and for the reed pipe blown across as the pandean pipe is blown across: which pipe from immemorial days has remained in the imperial archives, as the unalterable standard of pitch—unalterable because nature does not alter. I had a metal organ-pipe made to the precise length and diameter of this imperial standard, and it proved to be what we call _e_ flat; which, as I found out, has a significant relation, for our free reed pipe of this length gives a sound one fourth lower exactly—namely B flat. And this relation of the fourth dominates everything in the evolution of music. Our worker found this out; though knowing nothing of the interval of the fourth, he fixed it by natural evolution,—by measure, not by music: yet the measure afterwards made the music and the law of the music. I see him cut reeds as our country boys do from our grasses and spiers, and split a tongue on the side of one, as his ancestors had done centuries before, and make a piping-bird sound from it. He has some knowledge of the working of metals; is an adept at it; has by socialisation and its wants become an artificer in brass. The split reed becomes spoilt after frequent use, so he conceived the thought of making a substitute in metal.