Frequently small flutes are called flageolets by writers of the present day, but the true flageolet should have a bulb head. Its invention is ascribed to Juvigny, about 1581. The old French name is “_flagol_,” the German “_flaschinet_.” The name flageolet should properly be confined to those flutes or whistle pipes having a flask-like head or mouth-piece with a conducting neck—that is, a small tube inserted into a hollow bulb (hence the derivation of the name, from the same root from which “flagon” comes), and within the bulb a small piece of sponge inserted to collect and condense the moisture from the breath. Adrian, junior, quotes Aristotle on the _Bombyx_ flutes as to the length of the pipe, and says that “they were blown only with great exertion.” That they were difficult to perform upon, we may well believe; and we know that in our own clarionets the low notes require strength of wind more than the upper notes do; but the recorder or the translator may be responsible for the implication of great exertion. The longest flutes that have as yet been discovered are of the kind now under examination, and so far confirmatory of the right to the title that I have given them; and one of four (described in the next chapter) discovered at Pompeii, now in the museum at Naples, exceeds twenty inches in length, and in the copy of it made by Mr. Victor Mahillon the loops, being complete in their series, have strangely like appearance to caterpillars’ feet. I should not omit to remark that in our specimens, only traces exist here and there of such loops at points where they were soldered on; but, for verisimilitude, I have indicated the series on one of the pipes. At the second segment on the upper pipe marked with a short line—, the evidence is quite plain. Whether the interior tube is of ivory, bone, or wood, the condition is such that the eye cannot judge; but in the Naples instrument I believe that, without doubt, it was ivory, and the bore three eighths of an inch, as it seems to be in this case. The great advantage of ivory is obvious, because the cylinder necessarily fits close, and any swelling of the inner tube from moisture was a liability to be avoided. I have illustrated the square at the top of the mouthpiece, and shown the hole which is perforated in it and leads down to the body of the flute; and, looking at the diameter of the perforation—barely more than one eighth—the unsuitability of such for office of a lip blown flute, with its bore three times the size, is strikingly obvious.