There is a great tendency in Eastern scales to make flat fourths and sharp fifths. This same flat fourth is given by my set of Chinese bells, and I remember how Sir F. Gore Ouseley caught it instantly when he heard it. He had the keenest ear for pitch that I ever met. The A and A♭ depart from our relation of pitch. But the Japanese are so accustomed to freedom in altering their scales that the _Koto_, though tuned accurately, is during playing altered to the passing fancy of the player, who is allowed to pull the strings below the bridge or to press them just as the moment dictates, sharpening or flattening any interval. The classical scales used in religious and royal ceremonials and the popular scales are quite distinct, which shows how in course of time the music itself has changed. My bells above named give F♯, A, B, C♯; the F♯ to C♯ making a fifth, the F♯ to B making a flat fourth, the A to C♯ a sharp major third. We may reckon bells to be true carriers of pitch, scarcely, if anything, affected by age. Mr. A. J. Ellis traces the old Greek tetrachords in the Japanese scales, and remarks upon one, “it is interesting to observe that this _hiradio-shi_ scale, which consists of a tone and two conjunct tetrachords, each divided approximately into a semitone and its defect from a fourth, presents us with a survival of the oldest Greek tetrachord. Perhaps Olympos himself tuned no better than the Japanese musician I heard.” He also infers that the pentatonic scale was later than that of the tetrachord. He says “that China and Japan introduced nothing new beyond the original limitation of the scale to five notes, which arose in fact from divisions of tetrachords _into two parts only_. For instance, a semitone and major third, like those of Olympos (whose very division we find in the popular music of Japan), or else into a tone and a minor third; the thirds arising in each case as defects of the first interval of a fourth. Such tetrachords were then either conjunct or disjunct; but they were always capable of being completed into Greek scales, as has been actually done in Japan and China. On the other hand, Japan at least, and China also, have attained a system of twelve more or less exact equal semitones.”