The oval holes are not singular; I have several beautiful Japanese pipes with this feature in their construction. The coinciding holes of the two pipes may not have been intended to be identical in pitch or may have been used together to produce a quivering or voix céleste effect, through the partial shading of one by the fingers, and thus intended to give new resources to the skilful player. This is probable, because we find that at the present day the people of eastern climes are partial to this effect. The Egyptian _zummarah_, consisting of two unison pipes tied together is played to produce it. It is quite easy to obtain the waving of pitch to a large extent, by using two reeds that differ in stiffness. That the sounds given by the flute holes originally located by the spread of the fingers should prove to be distant from each other approximately by the interval we call a tone, is a mere coincidence as of numerical relation, the more or less extent being ultimately adjusted by experience. Another consideration I must tell you of because in my studies of old customs in instruments it has been impressed upon me too strongly to be neglected, and that is the old world tendency that prevails to make flat fourths. In the section on Chinese instruments this feature will be noticed though I do not think any other writer has mentioned it, and I believe the duplicates of certain fourths are only apparently such and are intended for the making of fourths of slightly different pitch, and that there is a practice of using one of these for the ascent and the other for the descent in the scale. I believe it to be a natural racial tendency to make flat fourths and that by provision of another note with a difference, they do a tuning based upon fourths accommodate the obtaining of the true octave. One of those pipes gives a complete tetrachord, a perfect fourth, the other extends it by a minor third, interveningly the flat fourth and the augmented fourth may be found within the scale of the two pipes combined. Not the Greek tetrachord but one of more primitive arrangement, before laws had been formulated for the relative degrees of tone and hemitones. There is also a leap interval of a tone and a half, which characterises the earliest of lyre scales, and may be the link connecting the evolution of the Greek scale from the Egyptian. Indeed in Asia and Arabia similar usages still persist, and to the peoples’ ears give content, they want no other. The subject is so interesting to the musician that the further analysis and investigation to which these valuable relics of a past age have been submitted, cannot fail of helping to a true understanding of the significance of the Lady Maket’s flutes, the oldest evidence of the world’s earliest music.