from having unfairly appropriated Gordon’s ideas.  The Boehm flute, since 1846, is a cylindrical tube for about three-fourths of its length from the lower end, after which it is continued in a curved conical prolongation to the cork stopper.  The finger holes are disposed in a geometrical division, and the mechanism and position of the keys are entirely different from what had been before.  The full compass of the Boehm flute is chromatic, from middle C to C, two octaves above the treble clef C, a range of three octaves, which is common to all concert flutes, and is not peculiar to the Boehm model.  Of course this compass is partly produced by altering the pressure of blowing.  Columns of air inclosed in pipes vibrate like strings in sections, but, unlike strings, the vibrations progress in the direction of length, not across the direction of length.  In the flute, all notes below D, in the treble clef, are produced by the normal pressure of wind; by an increasing pressure of overblowing the harmonics, D in the treble clef, and A and B above it, are successively attained.  The fingerholes and keys, by shortening the tube, fill up the required intervals of the scale.  There are higher harmonics still, but flautists generally prefer to do without them when they can get the note required by a lower harmonic.  In Boehm’s flute, his ingenious mechanism allows the production of the eleven chromatic semitones intermediate between the fundamental note of the flute and its first harmonic, by holes so disposed that, in opening them successively, they shorten the column of air in exact proportion.  It is, therefore, ideally, an equal temperament instrument and not a D major one, as the conical flute was considered to be.  Perhaps the most important thing Boehm did for the flute was to enunciate the principle that, to insure purity of tone and correct intonation, the holes must be put in their correct theoretical positions; and at least the hole below the one giving he sound must be open, to insure perfect venting.  Boehm’s flute, however, has not remained as he left it.  Improvements, applied by Clinton, Pratten, and Carte, have introduced certain modifications in the fingering, while retaining the best features of Boehm’s system.  But it seems to me that the reedy quality obtained from the adoption of the cylindrical bore which now prevails does away with the sweet and characteristic tone quality of the old conical German flute, and gives us in its place one that is not sufficiently distinct from that of the clarinet.

The flute is the most facile of all orchestral wind instruments; and the device of double tonguing, the quick repetition of notes by taking a staccato T-stop in blowing, is well known.  The flute generally goes with the violins in the orchestra, or sustains long notes with the other wood wind instruments, or is used in those conversational passages with other instruments that lend such a charm to orchestral music.  The lower notes are not powerful.  Mr. Henry Carte