There is another point of interest about such collections, and especially that at South Kensington, which must not be left unnoticed. Several instruments are remarkable on account of their elegant shape and tasteful ornamentation. This is particularly the case with some specimens from Asiatic countries. The beautiful designs with which they are embellished may afford valuable patterns for study and for adoption in works of art.
II.
PRE-HISTORIC RELICS AND ANCIENT EGYPTIAN.
A really complete account of all the musical instruments from the earliest time known to us would require much more space than can here be afforded. We can attempt only a concise historical survey. We venture to hope that the illustrations interspersed throughout the text will to the intelligent reader elucidate many facts which, for the reason stated, are touched upon but cursorily.
Pre-Historic Relics.
A musical relic has been exhumed in the department of Dordogne in France, which was constructed in an age when the fauna of France included the reindeer, the rhinoceros and the mammoth, the hyæna, the bear, and the cave-lion. It is a small bone somewhat less than two inches in length, in which is a hole, evidently bored by means of one of the little flint knives which men used before acquaintance with the employment of metal for tools and weapons.[1] Many of these flints were found in the same place with the bones. Only about half a dozen of the bones, of which a considerable number have been exhumed, possess the artificial hole.
M. Lartet surmises the perforated bone to have been used as a whistle in hunting animals. It is the first digital phalanx of a ruminant, drilled to a certain depth by a smooth cylindrical bore on its lower surface near the expanded upper articulation. On applying it to the lower lip and blowing into it a shrill sound is yielded. Three of these phalanges are
of reindeer, one is of chamois. Again, among the relics which have been brought to light from the cave of Lombrive, in the department of Ariège, occur several eye-teeth of the dog, which have a hole drilled into them near the root. Probably they also yield sounds, like those reindeer bones, or like the tube of a key. Another whistle—or rather a pipe, for it has three finger-holes by means of which different tones could be produced—was found in a burying-place, dating from the stone period, in the vicinity of Poitiers in France; it is rudely constructed from a fragment of stag’s horn. It is blown at the end, like a flûte à bec, and the three-finger holes are placed equidistantly. Four distinct tones must have been easily obtainable on it: the lowest, when all the finger-holes were covered; the other three, by opening the finger-holes successively. From the character of the stone utensils and weapons discovered with this pipe it is conjectured that the burying-place from which it was exhumed dates from the latest time of the stone age. Therefore, however old it may be, it is a more recent contrivance than the reindeer-bone whistle from the cavern of the Dordogne.
The Ancient Egyptians.