a saying that comes home to the experience of all of us, but only do we learn its truth when the May flowers that brought joy into our lives have withered and fallen. Hitherto the investigation in earliest music has proceeded upon evidences of man’s concern with and interest in pipes to make music with. Clearly at first such use of hollow reeds was the accident of the day to any passer-by,—as imagined by Lucretius, “Fond zephyrs playing on the hollow reeds First taught the peasant how to use the pipe.” Next came the constructive idea, purpose directed to an end in view, and the development in a very primitive manner of a series of sounds in some order or regularity of succession; for us this has been the chief consideration fixing our attention, to trace the evolution of system in the construction of instruments, therefrom deductively seeking to arrive at the system of the music. With instruments of all sorts collected with a view to antiquarian or archæological reference and study, I have nothing to do, museums may be filled with them, but unless they show us civilization effective nationally to advance some musical system, to notice them would but encumber with useless matter the enquiry such as I have proposed to myself. Musical pipes we have traced through several phases of development, from the simplest and earliest pipe up to the ultimate stage in the many-ringed flute, as perfected in the hands of the Greek people. Beyond that it is not necessary to go, because our objective is the Greek system of music, as left to us to be the source of our own. The stringed instruments will show a similar course of development from the one-stringed to the many-stringed. The evidences of this progress are very numerous, existing still, and I have no doubt that the investigation will prove to be equally interesting, for it is with the Greek Lyre that we shall arrive at the _method_ of the music. Meantime ancient China claims attention, for the Chinese hold a parallel course in time with the Egyptians. What has China to tell of earliest music? CHAPTER XIII. In the Land of China. THE OUTSPREAD PHŒNIX. The Chinese have always been fond of seeking the similitudes and contrasts existing between everything in heaven and earth. So far as they had attained in astronomical knowledge, the number of the planets was five; consequently there could be only five colours, five points of the compass, five elements, five primitive sounds, etc. Music was made the subject of many allegorical comparisons, as twelve moons, twelve sounds, twelve hours, twelve strings. And this strange propensity has quite perverted many of their records of history upon art and science; for whatever remained unknown or doubtful, appears to have been supplied with the utmost confidence upon some imaginary basis of affinity or relation of numbers mystically inevitable. The poetry of the symbol was lost in the pedantry of its exposition.