Those “findings” then, the treasure trove of explorers, have great attraction for me, as they have for many other musically-minded people. The archæologist, it is true, is in no degree concerned with their musical import, he is content with their presence as antiquities; paintings and sculpture interest him in many ways as examples of art, and consequently the musical investigator gains by researches which yield him pictures of musical instruments in the using, and representations often in marble and bronze; yet withal I do not imagine that the enlightenment of the musician has been one of the motives influencing the archæologist in his care for the preservation of the treasures recovered from the past. Thus it happens that in published illustrations the details, upon which so much of the teachable value depends, are too often inaccurately carried out, or perhaps it may be are fancifully perfected to accord with some preconceived idea, and thus the student is misled. In museums likewise, there is no little difficulty in obtaining accurate information respecting objects exhibited, and details which are of the first importance, are obscured by some awkwardness in the placing of the objects. The reason for these unintentional hindrances is simple enough: we have but to remember that the antiquarian is not bound to understand the nature of musical instruments, and as a matter of fact he does not understand them. The two chief lands that hold the music of the past are Egypt and China; yet in how different a manner is the holding of each. Which nation is the ancientist none can tell. East is East, and West is West. From some early birthplace the two people diverged. The people of Egypt have vanished; the people of China remain; they are one fifth of the existing human race. Both people intellectual; yet the brain development of the Chinese has had from its original birth-strain a distinct causation, making its course parallel to that of no other brain. A sport of nature? ask Darwin or the Dragon! In Egypt we dig and delve and year by year recover the treasures that she holds. In China there is nothing to recover, nothing to dig for, all her past is huddled on the surface. Her music and her musical instruments of the past are here to-day, the same as they ever were, there are no stages of development and no steps of ascent. Thus the treatment of the question of the earliest music of China is distinct from that of others, and the knowledge of the method of its foundation is to be gathered from the musical instruments still in use.