Trumpets are amongst the very earliest of musical instruments, yet remote as is their date they throw no light on musical scales of the period of their use. Nevertheless for their very ancientness we cannot well pass them by without reference. Pictures of them appear in Egypt and in Assyria, but beyond that Old Time is chary of yielding evidence. The workers in metal in very early times undertook the fashioning of imitations of the horns of sheep, antelopes and oxen, and thus made they were used in primitive musical effects in relation to sovereignty or ceremonial. How strongly the aims of all royal and priestly offices determined the development even of the minutiæ of civilisation and the tendencies of domestic and industrial life, we are hardly able to appreciate with our modern notion of the individual assertiveness, limited only by the general good of the community. So it is well that, in considering the position of the worker, we should remember that he worked in order to fulfil the demand or behest of the king or the priest; for both were to him equally sacred, and often indeed in one man the two offices were combined. Music may have remained with the people, as an instinct which in simple ways found its gratification; but as an art to be cultivated it had its beginnings to order. The musical instrument had a definite purpose to fulfil; and, under royal or priestly guidance, so long as that purpose was accomplished, little further thought was given to it. Under such conditions there was the perpetual tendency to stagnation; progress was not only unacceptable, but to the old conservatism, as in later days, the new thing was unnecessary; since, if it were desirable, it would have been thought of before by the proper responsible persons. Only under such like estimate can we understand the lack of resource, the poverty of invention, through many centuries during the sway of ancient monarchies, as regards musical instruments. The possibilities of the various types of instruments, as we know them, were unimaginable in those days; for the human ear had not so far progressed in sensitiveness as to be able to comprehend the feeling for tone, for colour, for range, or for expressiveness, as we by long use have grown accustomed to and look upon almost as our heritage. Yet how short a period has it been since anything like a collection of instruments represented by our modern orchestra attained even a passable mechanical development! And what are the two last centuries we look back upon in comparison with the thousands of years during which the primitive instruments remained in their crude, barbaric immaturity; unimproved, and with neither want nor longing that they should be improved!