has, however, designed an alto flute in A, descending to violin G, with excellent results.  There is a flute which transposes a minor third higher than the ordinary flute; but it is not much used in the orchestra, although used in the army, as is also a flute one semitone higher than the concert flute.  The piccolo, or octave flute, is more employed in the orchestra, and may double the melody in the highest octave, or accentuate brilliant points of effect in the score.  It is very shrill and exciting in the overblown notes, and without great care may give a vulgar character to the music, and for this reason Sir Arthur Sullivan has replaced it in the score of “Ivanhoe” by a high G flute.  The piccolo is exactly an octave higher than the flute, excepting the two lowest notes of which it is deficient.  The old cylindrical ear-piercing fife is an obsolete instrument, being superseded by a small army flute, still, however, called a fife, used with the side drum in the drum and fife band.

The transverse or German flute, introduced into the orchestra by Lulli, came into general use in the time of Handel; before that the recorders, or flute douces, the flute a bec with beak or whistle head, were preferred.  These instruments were used in a family, usually of eight members, viz., as many sizes from treble to bass; or in three, treble, alto or tenor, and bass.  A fine original set of those now rare instruments, eight in number, was shown in 1890 in the music gallery of the Royal Military Exhibition, at Chelsea; a loan collection admirably arranged by Captain C.B.  Day.  They were obtained from Hesse Darmstadt, and had their outer case to preserve them exactly like the recorder case represented in the painting by Holbein of the ambassadors, or rather, the scholars, recently acquired for the National Gallery.  The flageolet was the latest form of the treble, beak, or whistle head flute.  The whistle head is furnished with a cavity containing air, which, shaped by a narrow groove, strikes against the sharp edge and excites vibration in the conical pipe, on the same principle that an organ pipe is made to sound, or of the action of the player’s mouth and lips upon the blowhole of the flute.  As it will interest the audience to hear the tone of Shakespeare’s recorder, Mr. Henry Carte will play an air upon one.

The oboe takes the next place in the wood wind band.  The principle of sound excitement, that of the double reed, originating in the flattening of the end of an oat or wheat straw, is of great antiquity, but it could only be applied by insertion in tubes of very narrow diameter, so that the column of air should not be wider than the tongue straw or reed acting upon it.  The little reed bound round and contracted below the vibrating ends in this primitive form permitted the adjustment of the lower open end in the tube, it might be another longer reed or pipe which inclosed the air column; and thus a conical pipe that gradually