n the Bernice
Pauahi Bishop Museum one was cracked and voiceless; and so
the testimony of its surviving partner was of no avail.

The Hawaiians of the present day are so keenly alive to
musical harmony that it is hardly conceivable that their
ancestors two or three generations ago perpetrated discords
in their music. They must either have sung in unison or hit
on "concords such as were not disagreeable to the ear." If
the music heard in the halau to-day in any close degree
resembles that of ancient times--it must be assumed that it
does--no male voice of ordinary range need have found any
difficulty in sounding the notes, nor do they scale so low
that a female voice would not easily reach them.

Granting, then, as we must, the accuracy of Captain King's
statement, the conclusion to which the author of this paper
feels forced is that since the time of the learned doctor's
visit to these shores, more than one hundred and twenty-eight
years ago, the art and practice of singing or cantillating
after the old fashion has declined among the Hawaiians. The
hula of the old times, in spite of all the efforts to
[Page 153] maintain it, is becoming more and more difficult of
procurement every day. Almost none of the singing that one
hears at the so-called hula performances gotten up for the
delectation of sightseers is Hawaiian music of the old sort.
It belongs rather to the second or third rattoon-crop, which,
has sprung up under the influence of foreign stimuli. Take
the published hula songs, such as "_Tomitomi_," "_Wahine
Poupou_" and a dozen others that might be mentioned, to say
nothing about the words--the music is no more related to the
genuine Hawaiian article of the old times than is "ragtime"
to a Gregorian chant.

The bare score of a hula song, stripped of all embellishments
and reduced by the logic of our musical science to the merest
skeleton of notes, certainly makes a poor showing and gives
but a feeble notion of the song itself--its rhythm, its
multitudinous grace-notes, its weird tone-color. The notes
given below offer such a skeletal