narrows to the diameter of the tongue reed must have been early discovered, and was the original type of the pastoral and beautiful oboe of the modern orchestra.  Like the flute, the oboe has only the soprano register, extending from B flat or natural below middle C to F above the treble clef, two octaves and a fifth, which a little exceeds the flute downward.  The foundation of the scale is D major, the same as the flute was before Boehm altered it.  Triebert, a skillful Parisian maker, tried to adapt Boehm’s reform of the flute to the oboe, but so far as the geometrical division of the scale was concerned, he failed, because it altered the characteristic tone quality of the instrument, so desirable for the balance of orchestral coloration.  But the fingering has been modified with considerable success, although it is true by a much greater complication of means than the more simple contrivances that preceded it, which are still preferred by the players.  The oboe reed has been much altered since the earlier years of this century.  It was formerly more like the reed of the shawm, an instrument from which the oboe has been derived; and that of the present bassoon.  It is now made narrower, with much advantage in the refinement of the tone.  As in the flute, the notes up to C sharp in the treble clef are produced by the normal blowing, and simply shortening the tube by opening the sound holes.  Beyond that note, increased pressure, or overblowing, assisted by a harmonic “speaker” key, produces the first harmonic, that of the octave, and so on.  The lowest notes are rough and the highest shrill; from A to D above the treble clef, the tone quality of the oboe is of a tender charm in melody.  Although not loud, its tone is penetrating and prominent.  Its staccato has an agreeable effect.  The place of the oboe in the wood wind band between the flute and the clarinet, with the bassoon for a bass, is beyond the possibility of improvement by any change.

Like the flute, there was a complete family of oboes in the sixteenth and early in the seventeenth century; the little schalmey, the discant schalmey, from which the present oboe is derived; the alto, tenor, pommer, and bass pommers, and the double quint or contrabass pommer.

In all these old finger hole instruments the scale begins with the first hole, a note in the bagpipe with which the drones agree, and not the entire tube.  From the bass and double quint pommers came ultimately the bassoon and contra-bassoon, and from the alto pommer, an obsolete instrument for which Bach wrote, called the oboe di caccia, or hunting oboe, an appellation unexplained, unless it had originally a horn-like tone, and was, as it has been suggested to me by Mr. Blaikley, used by those who could not make a real hunting horn sound.  It was bent to a knee shape to facilitate performance.  It was not exactly the cor Anglais or English horn, a modern instrument of the same pitch which is bent like it, and of similar compass, a fifth