pass of which is from the double bass octave B flat to the
higher G in the bass clef.

Before leaving the double reed wind instruments, a few words should be
said of a family of instruments in the sixteenth century as important
as the schalmeys, pommers, and bombards, but long since extinct. This
was the cromorne, a wooden instrument with cylindrical column of air;
the name is considered to remain in the cremona stop of the organ. The
lower end is turned up like a shepherd's crook reversed, from whence
the French name "tournebout." Cromorne is the German "krummhorn;"
there is no English equivalent known.

The tone, as in all the reed instruments of the period, was strong and
often bleating. The double reed was inclosed in a _pirouette_, or cup,
and the keys of the tenor or bass, just the same as with similar
flutes and bombards, were hidden by a barrel-shaped cover, pierced
with small openings, apparently intended to modify the too searching
tone as well as to protect the touch pieces which moved the keys. The
compass was limited to fundamental notes, and from the cylindrical
tube and reed was an octave lower in pitch than the length would show.
In all these instruments provision was made in the holes and keys for
transposition of the hands according to the player's habit of placing
the right or left hand above the other. The unused hole was stopped
with wax. There is a fine and complete set of four cromornes in the
museum of the Conservatoire at Brussels.

We must also place among double-reed instruments the various bagpipes,
cornemuses, and musettes, which are shawm or oboe instruments with
reservoirs of air, and furnished with drones inclosing single reeds. I
shall have more to say about the drone in the third lecture. In
restricting our attention to the Highland bagpipe, with which we are
more or less familiar, it is surprising to find the peculiar scale of
the chaunter, or finger pipe, in an old Arabic scale, still prevailing
in Syria and Egypt. Dr. A.J. Ellis' lecture on "The Musical Scales of
Various Nations," read before the Society of Arts, and printed in the
_Journal_ of the Society, March 27, 1885, No. 1688, vol. xxxiii., and
in an appendix, October 30, 1885, in the same volume, should be
consulted by any one who wishes to know more about this curious
similarity.

We have now arrived at the clarinet. Although embodying a very ancient
principle--the "squeaker" reed which our little children still make,
an