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This is a scale of eight tones and bears some slight relation to the minor scale in use at the present day.

Among the Tahitians Captain Cook observed that the raising or lowering of the pitch of a single flute or pipe was accomplished by rolling up a leaf in tubular form, inserting this improvised tube into the bottom of the flute and pushing it in or drawing it out until the required pitch was obtained. Some such device as this quite probably suggested the obtaining of different tones from the same pipe. The rolled-up leaf itself was used as a pipe capable of giving forth a true musical tone.

One of the natives of the Sandwich Islands, on being questioned in regard to their primitive musical instruments, stripped a leaf from the ti plant and, rolling it up somewhat in the shape of an old-fashioned lamp-lighter, blew through it, producing a tone of pure reedlike quality. Emerson says: ‘This little rustic pipe, quickly improvised from the leaf that every Hawaiian garden supplies, would at once convert any skeptic to a belief in the pipes of the god Pan.’[6]

Among the inhabitants of New Guinea a flute or pipe is in use in which the tones are varied by means of a slide which is pushed into the tube or withdrawn in much the same manner as the rolled-up leaf mentioned by Captain Cook, but evidently on a much more extensive scale. This is in effect a primitive trombone.

Finally, flutes or pipes which are pierced with holes are found among many savage tribes, who have discovered that the effect of lengthening or shortening the tube could be obtained by boring holes in it and stopping them or unstopping them with the fingers. Simple as this may appear to us, it was a great discovery for the savage mind to make, and must have been the culmination of many groping attempts to attain this end extending through long ages.

On the most primitive instruments of this nature the finger holes were but two or three in number, but flutes or pipes are now found among nearly all savages capable of giving scales of from five to eight tones. Fétis figures and describes an instrument made from the horn of a stag, which was found in an ancient sepulchre, near Poitiers, France. This instrument, which is a sort of trumpet or flute-à-bec,[7] is pierced with three holes and gives a series of four diatonic tones. The lowest with all the holes stopped; the next higher with one finger raised, and so on. It is described as being made with great care and precision, the holes having been placed with an exactitude which would seem to indicate a considerable knowledge and appreciation of certain facts of acoustics.

In the sepulchre where this instrument was found there were arms and other implements made of stone. This musical instrument, therefore, almost surely dates from the later period of the stone age, which age preceded in point of time the age in which man discovered and made use of the metals. It is therefore prehistoric and undoubtedly of very great antiquity. In the New York Museum of Natural History there is a collection of ancient bone flutes from Peru. These flutes are pierced with finger holes and give various scales of four, five, and six tones. The four-toned scale

, sounds entirely rational and is in accordance with our modern ideas of diatonic succession; also this five-toned scale