“Might have seen as in a vision The bright procession of the Gods Winding up the long slope of Olympus, Sometimes pausing to look back sadly At a world where they were no longer needed.” A glance at the map of Asia will show you a long trend of mountains from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf. This vast plateau lies like a great backbone across Asia; the Caucasus, the Armenian mountains, the Zagros mountains, the Iranian mountains; on the eastern slope of these the Hindoo Cush, and the great Divide. It is a curious fact worth thinking about that the Lute crossed over the ranges of the Hindoo Cush to the Valley of the Indus and to the Ganges and became the parent of the Ravanastron, or Indian Violin, and other tribes of bowed string instruments. The Lyre and the Harp never passed, nor the double flutes (except as left by Alexander the Great after his conquest) and the same with China. The feeling of the Hindoos has settled upon instruments with many frets and moveable bridges, and unfortunately the relics of the real old days of that land have not been preserved. On the Western side of this mountainous range I have shewn the type of stringed instruments that prevailed, from Chaldea and Babylonia to Egypt, from Assyria and Asia Minor to Greece, the chief feature of the lyre and the harp being an _open frame_ with a body that is founded on a boat-shape. These open-frame instruments are not found on the Eastern side. Why? it remains an open question. Yet the long-necked Lute or Nefer became acclimatised there in India. Was the instrument the cause of the character developed in their music? It is easy to see how it would lend itself to minute division, originating twenty intervals within an octave. Race, climate, and geography, are the great factors in the developments of the art of music. Here, with reluctance I bring this volume to a close, for its pages have already extended in number much beyond the limit of the original intent. During the progress of the work new materials have come to hand giving an additional interest to the subject, information and illustrations acquired too late for incorporation in their relevant places, and too important in their bearing upon the investigation to be lightly sketched in, with but scant recognition of value. There is much yet to be added to the search for the origin of the Apollo Lyre; both the three-stringed and the four-stringed I have found depicted on a vase, of a date at least 900 B.C., and Dr. A. J. Evans has favoured me with a drawing of a pictograph seal, representing an eight-stringed lyre, found in his explorations at Knossos in Crete, and he writes me that he now places the date 2,000 B.C. From Egypt there comes a picture of large cross-string harps, a construction undreamt of as an ancient idea, but veritably so, discovered by Dr. Flinders Petrie at Abydos, in the Tombs of the Kings. The illustration which he has given me is of great interest.