(5) Richard Bach Smith is a musical prodigy according to his mother. At the age of five he plays, sings, composes, and is an accomplished sight-reader. Is this heredity, environment, or both? How would you order his musical education? (6) Miss Jennie Lind Jones has a musical father and an unmusical mother, lives in a fine musical environment, and has enjoyed fourteen years of excellent training; but she "has no rhythm," her piano phrasing is "cold", and her music is a "drudgery." What do you predict for her? What would you have done for her? (7) Subject for debate: Given both, resolved, that inherited talent is a larger factor than musical education and environment in the development of a great musician. Chapter VII THE FUTURE OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS Are we nearing the end of the "horse-and-buggy" stage of musical instruments? Can the possibilities for revolutionary procedures now looming up in the construction of musical instruments be as strategic for music as were the principles embodied in the coming of the automobile and the airplane for transportation? Those of us who remember that faithful animal and servant of man, the horse, and the conveyances he served, look back with fond appreciation upon what amounted to a sort of fellowship with a fine-performing animal and the luxury of being conveyed by him in saddle or on wheel. So future generations may look back upon the past in fond memories of the companionship they have enjoyed with their favorite instruments, which may be destined to a niche in the historical museum. But in spite of competition, the horse has survived, and so probably will the fiddle and some of its companion instruments. It is now safe to predict that the future instrument maker will be able to produce any sound now known in nature or in art that may possibly have musical significance. We already have at hand the means by which any such sound can be adequately defined, described, specified, measured, analyzed, and reconstructed. And there is reason to think that with the conquest of new and marvelous resources for musical media, musical composition will move with strides in step with instrument building.