You can now proceed to make this false bottom, taking great care that the front part, which is of hard wood (Fig. 2, C), fits the space you left for it exactly, and without a flaw. The mechanism of this false bottom is so simple that instead of describing it or illustrating it, I beg to refer you to your friend Smith’s cage. A glance will suffice. But remember not to spare the glue on that either.

Well, a glance at the complete cage (Fig. 2) will show you that there is a wire partition at D dividing the cage into two compartments, a big and a small. This partition, however, does not go right to the bottom of the cage, because it is a sliding one and draws out. It runs at top and bottom in grooves made by three pieces of wood, one of the pieces of the lower groove being deeper than the others, and quite filling up the vacancy between the false bottom and the wire partition, so as to prevent a bird from creeping through under.

This wire partition, then, had better be made next. It is simply a carefully measured and carefully adjusted square frame, neatly wired in the same way as the barred front of the cage is wired, of which I shall presently speak. You make the little frame first, then you bore your holes and wire it, and next you nail and glue a little front piece of hard wood on to it with a small wire-work handle in the centre, whereby to pull it out.

The grooves in which this is to run should now be made top and bottom, the lower one fastened to the cross board (A), and the upper to the back of the cage at one end and to the front when finished at the other.

Now for the front. This is to be made separately, and then slipped in. There is another plan, but I think I give the better of the two. Glance again at Fig. 2. Take a look at friend Smith’s cage as well. Now scratch your elbow thoughtfully, gather all your scattered senses together, and all your brains, and proceed to business. There is a top bar and a lower bar, and two strong cross wires; but mark this, please—these cross wires are not continuous all the way, there must be a space left for your wire partition to slip out and in.

Well, you have your wires all ready. Measure the length you want them, and cut them all of a size a little longer than they are actually required. They have to pass right through the upper bar (Fig. 2), and be fastened into the lower (Fig. 2), and as the same space—namely, half an inch—must exist between each wire, before you bore the holes for them you must carefully mark the places on both bars, and this is done either with a pair of compasses, or more surely and securely with the prongs of a two-toed fork. While making or wiring the front, be sure first that the top and bottom bars are exactly the same length, then lay them fair and square on your bench or table, and tack them down with small nails: so shall you do your work firmly and well. Bore the holes very even which you have marked off, then put each wire through separately and snip off with your pliers what is not wanted. The wires, by means of your hand-vice, should previously be made as straight as possible. When you have got all your upright wires in put on your cross pieces. These are simply laid on over the others and whipped in position with a long thread of very fine wire.

Now your front is all ready. Of course you have not forgotten the little ring-like spaces at the bottom, through which the canary pops its head to get a drop of water from the fountains. These last may be glass, and they are slung in wire loops from the cross-board.

The perches are easily put in. It is better to have one cross one as well as two or three from front to back.

When you have your little doors made, and neatly hinged with wire, the greater part of the work is finished.

The polishing and varnishing, and nest and nest material, I will speak about presently. The different types of cages shown in Figs. 3 to 5 need no verbal explanation, the pictures speaking for themselves.

III.—NESTS AND NEST-BOXES—THE GERMAN METHOD OF BREEDING—HUTCHES FOR RABBITS, GUINEA-PIGS, RATS, AND SQUIRRELS.

It will be high time now to return your friend Smith’s cage, for the probability is that, as the breeding season will soon commence, he will want it himself. I gave full directions just now for the completion of your own cage, with one or two little items excepted. Take a glance before you carry it back, then, at the neat way small fastenings and hinges are made for the doors, and little handles to pull out the partition and the false bottom, and the solitary big one on the top for the purpose of lifting the cage. Very natty and neat, are they not? and all made out of wirework. Pliers and pincers, and a little handiness on your part, are all that is wanted, but it is better you should observe how things are done. The wire loops that hold the glass fountains are fastened in the same way—holes made, the wire put through and doubled down behind so that it shall not pull out, and the whole thing is ready.

Two tiny two-inch square or oval tin drawers to slip in at each corner of the lower front of the cage are infinitely better to hold seed and food generally, than those long wooden world-old drawers with holes in them, which make such beautiful receptacles for dust and vermin.

As to the nests, you have plenty of option. These can be bought. There are wooden ones to hang up on a nail at the back of the cage, tin ones, basket or rope ones, and also those which you can make yourself out of half a large cocoanut-shell. The basket and rope nests, it is said—I have not tried them and do not mean to—do very well if previously steeped in petroleum and dried. The tin and earthenware nests are neatly lined with soft felt; a bit of an old hat does very well properly shaped, steeped, and moulded in.

The cocoanut-shell will suit every useful purpose. You can make it yourself, lining it well with warm lambs’-wool. Fasten a loop of wire round the top edge to join in front, and finally extend to form two hooks to fasten the nest on to the cage.

When breeding birds, it is as well to have a small nursery cage to put the fledgelings into. The parent birds then feed them through the bars. Also a bath-cage. Both these are attached when wanted to the main cage. They are very simple in construction, and you can easily make them yourself. Any ordinary small cage will do for the bath, one side being taken out and hooks put on wherewith to fit it to the side of the cage opposite the doorway. The bath is a tin or zinc dish inside the cage, but a large saucer or a soup plate will do very well. Remember, I am not talking now about breeding, but ordinary living cages.

Mr. Abrahams, the well-known naturalist, of 191, George Street East, London, a visit to whose menagerie would well repay any one fond of birds and beasts, writes to me in the following strain about canary breeding. I need hardly tell you that I value his opinions, as they are the result of long experience. He says: ‘I do not hold with the English way of breeding canaries; they will stick to their old style of a hundred years back. They use cages which may be divided, by means of a partition, into two compartments. In one of these compartments there are two small boxes, in which the birds are to build their nests. Outside the cage a bag is fastened containing hair and other building material, which not seldom are far from cleanly, and often already provided with the eggs and germs of insects (vermin).

‘It is rarely that the male and female are of the same opinion in which box the nest should be built. If the hen has begun to build in one box the cock will pull the nest to pieces, and begin to work in the other box, and vice versâ. Thus not only is time lost, but the birds are excited and become weak. When at last they have young ones they are often wretched, timid little things, and often both young and parents die from being continually worried by insects.

‘Many tens of thousands of canaries are imported annually into England from the Continent, and of these the Belgian, Dutch, and French canaries especially are strong, bold-looking fellows, and nothing like our timid little creatures that flutter about or creep into a corner if anybody comes near the cage. How can this difference be accounted for? On my many travels in the countries of the Continent I have watched how canaries are bred there. Almost every working man breeds canaries in his workshop. On one side of the room he has his bench or worktable, and round the walls there are cages, parted off by partitions into smaller compartments of about three feet square. Each of these compartments can again be divided into two by a movable partition, which consists simply of a wooden frame covered over with wire. In one compartment the cock is put; in the other one or more hens; also a tin with seed and another with water. Now the moment is watched when the cock and hen become friendly, then the partition is withdrawn, so that both compartments become one. Then a nest—or more, if there are several hens—is hung up in position by hooks to the wire. For small birds, a small one; for longer birds, such as the Belgians, etc., a larger one. They are made of leather, lined with lambskin with wool on it, and ready for use, so that the birds do not receive or want any building material. It cannot be pulled to pieces. When once used it can be washed and be nice and clean for a second nesting, so that there is no fear of insects troubling the birds. Feeding and cleaning of cages takes only a few minutes daily. The eggs and the young ones can be looked at at any time without frightening the birds; they get used to their keeper and lose all fear. Is it to be wondered at, then, that the young also are strong, bold-looking birds?’

Referring to the German cage figured on page 405, he adds: ‘I forgot to mention that the cage is divided into two compartments by a wire partition. When the old birds go to nest a second time the young ones are shut up into the smaller compartment; the old ones will continue to feed them through the wire as long as it is necessary.’

Well now, if you have done all I told you, if you are the proud owner of a good box of tools, many, if not all of which, mind, you can buy for very little, second-hand, at any dealer’s or broker’s, and if you have managed to make a breeding cage, you are capable of making any other kind of cage or hutch either. I do not refer to those dandy all-wire and painted-tin businesses. You can try your hand at these if you like, but as I do not approve of them, on the principle that all birds should have a partially shut-in cage, as they dearly love a little privacy, I shall not describe the process of manufacture. You will, however, naturally wish your cages to look nice. Well, varnish the front with the ordinary mahogany varnish of the shops, having first rubbed the woodwork very smooth.

I have spent so much time over directions for cage-making that my space is small in which to deal with hutches. I do not regret it, however, for the boy that can make a cage can make a hutch. He has only to see one and carefully examine it.

The same kind of hutch that is used for rabbits does excellently well for guinea-pigs.

Now you can make a very serviceable hutch out of that useful article a bacon box.

First it must be thoroughly washed and cleaned and exposed for a day or two to the weather. Then if meant to stand under cover, in, say, an outhouse, you simply make a doorway and cover it with galvanized iron network, price about twopence a yard, and cover all the front, with the exception of about a foot (this to be covered with wood), with the same kind of network. The bottom of the box should be covered with zinc for cleanliness’ sake. This is an ordinary hutch. The breeding hutch is different, as there must be a dark retiring room for the mother and young. The floors of hutches ought to slant a little forwards, and they ought to be always well raised off the ground.

Squirrels’ and rats’ cages are easily made, and a good deal of amusement can be got out of these animals if they are well treated and have plenty of room. Both rats and squirrels like a dark retiring or sleeping compartment; this should have a door behind. Personally, I think the ordinary wheel arrangement is cruel. I do not like to see an animal that contributes to our amusement condemned to penal servitude and the treadmill.

Different kinds of birds require differently arranged cages, but whenever you make up your mind to keep any kind of bird as a pet, go boldly to work and make a cage for it, if needs be, borrowing one as a pattern for the purpose.

CHAPTER XLVII.—HOW TO MAKE A CAGE FOR WHITE MICE.
By W. G. Campbell.

To make a cage with sleeping-boxes in the upper part, and a ladder for the mice to ascend and descend by, is by no means a difficult operation, nor does it cost an exorbitant price; and it is very pleasant to watch the inhabitants climbing up and down, and running in and out of the holes in their upstairs rooms, and also to see the small animals swinging about in their boat-swings; nor, after one or two days, do they seem at all to wish to get out, or to gnaw their bars, as many mice do if confined in a narrow space.

I will first give a list of the materials and their cost, and after that proceed to describe how the cage is to be made:—

These articles can be readily obtained at any ironmonger’s or smith’s, except the emery-paper, which an oilman would supply. The thick wire should be about as thick as a thin knitting-needle, the other wire, as it is for binding purposes, should be as thin as possible; so also should the zinc; the hinges ought to be about an inch long; the iron bar will be described as hereafter.

The following are the sizes and descriptions of pieces of wood for a cage 18 in. long by 13 in. high and 10 in. deep:—

The wood should be ¹⁄₂ in. thick. The cage that I made, and which was a very neat one, was formed from a box and some loose pieces of wood obtained from a grocer for 4d.

First of all the pieces B B should be nailed at the ends of A, leaving 1 in. of A projecting at back, and then from the top of each of them a strip 5 in. by ¹⁄₂ in. should be cut, so that the piece C can now be nailed to join the ends and form front half of cover; across upper half of back we will next nail D: the framework is thus finished.

Now let us make the sleeping-boxes. First we must with a centrebit bore three holes an inch in diameter in piece F for entrances to nests; then let us nail G and G´ on one side of F to divide sleeping-box into three equal compartments; to these we should next nail E, projecting 1⁵⁄₈ in. beyond F to form run in front of nests. Two holes should then be bored with a bradawl near the front edge of this run, opposite middle hole to F, to receive ends of ladder, which will be described hereafter. Next we must tack a strip of zinc along this run with eight or nine tacks, punching small holes just above those bored with bradawl; then nail the sleeping-boxes thus made to B B´ and D as shown in drawing, leaving a slit of ¹⁄₈ in. between F and back edge of C through which a piece of zinc 4 in. by 17 in. is to be slipped, to keep the mice in their boxes while cleaning out the cage. The ends, bottom, and large door should then be lined with zinc inside, leaving a space of ¹⁄₂ in. all round front of cage, where the wires are to come; and just under the holes bored in the run outside sleeping-box punch two others the same distance apart in the zinc which lines the bottom—these are to hold the lower spikes of the ladder. The zinc should be tacked down as much as possible as well in the middle as at the edges, having holes punched in it for the tacks to go through.

Now bore holes ¹⁄₄ in. apart along C, and same in but not through A, about ¹⁄₄ in. from front edge of each, then cut off from your wire enough pieces 12³⁄₄ in. long to go through these holes, which will be about sixty-eight in number. Let the wood of A be quite ¹⁄₂ in. thick or a little more, so that the wires can have as much hold in it as possible. Straighten your wires, emery-paper them, and push them through the top holes, and bring them down to the corresponding ones in the bottom; then fix two longitudinal wires from B to B´ across the front of the others, and bind these upright wires to them with the pliant wire.

Hinge the doors to D, as shown in drawing, and splay front edge of each of small doors, K, K´ and K´´, and top edge of F, so that these doors may shut closely. Each small door should also have a hole made with the centrebit in the middle, and a piece of perforated zinc should be tacked over them inside to ventilate the nests. We now come to the ladder. Get two pieces of wood 8³⁄₄ in. long by ¹⁄₄ in. broad and ¹⁄₄ thick, and make holes every ¹⁄₂ in. along them, and in each end of them bore a hole, and drive a piece of thick wire ⁵⁄₈ in. long in all these end holes, leaving ³⁄₈ in. projecting from top ends, and ¹⁄₄ in. from bottom; then break off enough pieces 1 in. long to go into remaining holes of one of your sticks, and drive them in, but not so as to come through the other side; then drive the other ends into the remaining stick, and your ladder is finished. The boat-swings can be easily made in the same manner after looking at drawing, and fastened at the top of the wire that they are hung by with two staples to floor of sleeping-box. The fastenings can be made from staples, those marked a for large door, and b for small doors; the hooks of a should be put a little lower than middle of large door and the catches in ends of cage.

Thin strips of zinc should be tacked in any places where the mice could gnaw the wood.

Now, if you are going to have a handle, get as small an iron one as will comfortably lift your cage, and screw it on to C, as near sleeping-boxes as possible; then, as you will find the sleeping-box side will be the heavier, you might get a bar of old iron from an ironmonger or smith 18 in. long, between ¹⁄₄ in. and ³⁄₈ in. thick, and broad enough to make your cage weigh equally; have three holes drilled in it, and screw it underneath the cage in front.

A few remarks more about the cage and its inhabitants, and I shall have finished.

The cage must have sawdust strewed on the floor and hay in the nests; the former must be changed once a day, and the latter every other day, or at least twice a week. If you cannot get sawdust anywhere else, an oilman will let you have enough to last you a month for twopence. In such a cage as I have described a ‘boar’ and six ‘sows’ may be kept. When a sow is about to have young it should be put in a small cage by itself, and as soon as the young are old enough to eat and run about they may be turned with their mother into this big cage. Perhaps they will get chased about a little at first, but they will not be hurt, and will be all right by the next morning. As soon as they are a month or six weeks old they should be removed elsewhere. Only one full-grown boar should be kept in a cage.

When mice are first put in such a cage as I have described, the ladder appears steep for them, but they soon get used to it, and reach their nests in two or three bounds from the ground.

SECTION VIII.
MUSIC AND MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS AND TOYS.—HOW TO MAKE THEM AND HOW TO PLAY THEM.

CHAPTER XLVIII.—MUSICAL GLASSES AND THE WOOD HARMONICON.

I.—THE GLASS HARMONICON.

The harmonicon is not a very difficult instrument to make. It consists of a box and a series of plates—of metal, stone, or glass—to give the sounds.

Take a piece of deal free from knots and shakes, and plane it smooth and true. Let it be of the shape of Fig. 1, three-sixteenths of an inch thick, six and a half inches wide at the top, four and an eighth inches wide at the bottom, and twenty-three and a half inches along the side which is at right angles to the ends. The slope will be just a trifle longer.

This piece of wood is for the bottom of the box. Now for the sides. Make them out of quarter-inch stuff, twenty-three and a half inches long and one inch and five-eighths wide. For the ends take two pieces of three-eighths stuff an inch and five-eighths wide; and let one be six and a half inches and the other four inches long. For the tops, as shown in Fig. 2, take two slips a quarter of an inch thick and two inches wide at one end, and an inch and a half wide at the other.

Let the wood be as perfect in quality and equal in thickness as possible, and glue up the box—without the tops—as evenly as you can. The box can be nailed or screwed if you think it will be easier for you, but the result will not be so satisfactory. The box is like a fiddle, and the more of a perfect shell it is the truer and fuller will be the sound.

In the centre of the box glue in the bridge, which will be about five and a quarter inches long and half an inch wide, and should stand clear of the bottom and clear of the tops. Then in the broad end, at two and a quarter inches from its sides, cut the slots, as shown in Fig. 3; and at the other end, as shown in Fig. 4, cut the slots one inch and a quarter from each side. Below each slot is shown a small circle. This represents the head of the screw or tack round which the twine is strung on which the musical plates are to rest.

For the string use very fine twine, crochet cotton, or silk, and stretch it very tightly, and fasten it off at the end it started from; that is to say, fix it at the broad end under the tack, then pass it under the tack at the narrow end, then under the other tack at the narrow end, and then bring it up to the broad end and there finish it off. It should be very tight, and just rest on the bridge in the middle.

The next thing is the glass, which should be cut in inch strips, and fixed on to the strings with a drop of sealing-wax. Let us have eighteen notes ranging from B to E in the key of C. The true dimensions and position will have to be found by experiment, but for glass a sixteenth of an inch in thickness the following will be found the suitable lengths. B should measure five and three-eighths; C, five and a quarter; D, five; E, four and seven-eighths; F, four and five-eighths; G, four and a half; A, four and three-eighths; B, four and a quarter; C, four and an eighth; D, three and three-quarters; E, three and five-eighths; F, three and a half; G, three and three-eighths; A, three and a quarter; B, three and an eighth; C, three and an eighth; D, three and an eighth; E, two and three-quarters. These are the lengths for glasses an inch in width.

The glasses should be laid on the strings, which gradually approach each other, and they should be shifted about until the correct note for each is obtained. In Fig. 1 we have shown how they rest on the strings, and in Fig. 2 we have boxed them in and shown by the space at the end how they may have to be closed up to keep the proper intervals. As soon as the notes are right, fix the glasses on to the string with a tiny drop of sealing-wax. And also fasten the string on to the bridge with wax so as to make everything secure. Then glue on the tops to hide the ragged ends, and the harmonicon is complete. For the hammers glue a piece of cork or wood on to a length of whalebone or split cane, or any springy stick about eight inches long. A convenient shape is that shown in Fig. 5, where the black head represents the cork cut to a wedge.

Although many tunes can be very pleasingly played on this simple instrument, do not let it be supposed that it at all resembles the harmonica for which music was written by the great composers. That was a different affair altogether. Perhaps a few notes concerning it may not be uninteresting.

One of the first allusions to an instrument of the sort is by Harsdörfer in 1677, though among savage nations, Burmese and what not, rock, bone, and wood harmonicas have existed for ages. On St. George’s Day in 1746, Gluck played a concerto on twenty-six drinking-glasses, ‘tuned with spring water.’ The instrument was of his own invention, and he played it accompanied by the whole band. It was said to be capable of producing all the effects of the violin and harpsichord.

When Benjamin Franklin was in London in 1762, he saw Puckeridge and Delaval amusing themselves by playing tunes on ordinary drinking-tumblers. The tumblers were tuned by the water poured into them up to different levels—the higher the water the lower the note—and were sounded by wiping a wet finger round their brims. Franklin was so much struck with this that he straightway took the matter in hand and invented the harmonica, for which the music used to be written, and of which a specimen now rests in the South Kensington Museum.

The harmonica—Franklin called it the ‘armonica’—consisted of a series of glass bells fixed in regular order on an iron spindle made to revolve like a lathe with a treadle. The sound was produced by pressing the wet fingers on the bells as they rotated, and it could be increased or decreased in volume and tone by varying that pressure.

Franklin presented his invention to the Davies family, with whom he was connected, and one of them, Marianne, performed on it with great success in London, Paris, Florence, and Vienna. The constant thrilling of the fingers affected her nerves, however, and she had to abandon it, just in the same way as had Naumann, the composer, who ‘found it necessary to restrict himself in practising.’

Some of the music played by Miss Davies was specially written for the instrument by Hasse; and when, in 1791, the blind Kirchgässner went to Vienna, Mozart wrote an adagio and rondo in C for harmonica, flute, oboe, violin, and violoncello. Who in these days would imagine that the ‘musical glasses’ once stood so high in the world?

Three years afterwards Kirchgässner came to London, and there played on a new harmonica built by Fröschel. At Darmstadt the harmonica held its place in the Court orchestra, and C. F. Pohl ‘professed’ it. Beethoven even condescended to write for ‘the glasses,’ and Naumann’s half-dozen sonatas for them still exist.

The instrument, however, has been laid on the shelf—or rather consigned to its case as a curiosity—and the musical glasses of to-day are the harmonicon we have described, and the tumblers about which we may now say a word.

II.—MUSICAL TUMBLERS.

Musical glasses have been arranged in many ways. Sometimes they have been all of one size, and the different tones have been produced by varying quantities of water placed in them. This, however, was a troublesome and clumsy way of getting effects.

Another method was to place forty-one parallel glass cylinders of equal length and thickness on a perpendicular sounding-board. These tubes were wetted and stroked, the music varying by the greater or less pressure of the performer’s fingers. This, it is obvious, must have been a difficult instrument to play.

The musical glasses originally arranged by Dr. Arnott are undoubtedly the best, and with a little patience can be easily and cheaply made by anyone. The patience is required to hunt up glasses having the required notes on them.

We give a drawing of this above. The open circles represent the mouths of the glasses standing in a wooden case. The relation of the glasses to the written musical notes is shown by the lines and spaces which connect them. The learner will see at once that one row produces the notes written upon the lines, the other row those in the spaces. There are two octaves, and the player stands by the side of the case, with the notes ascending towards the right hand, as in the pianoforte. The sounds are produced by passing the moistened fingers round the edges of the glasses. A little gum dissolved in the water makes the fingers ‘bite’ better, and produces a greater volume of sound.

III.—A WOOD HARMONICON.

In the section on ‘The Musical Glasses’ we gave at length the details of construction of a glass harmonicon. An instrument of the same character made of wood is now, it seems, taking a place in the French orchestras, and we herewith give an illustration of the latest form of the so-called ‘Xylophone’ as used in Paris, with the names of the notes marked in the French manner, wherein the ancient ‘Ut’ does duty for the modern ‘Do.’

The curious in such matters must have noticed the wide distribution of the bamboo harmonicon. Some such instrument for the production of sharp, short sounds can be traced back to the old Greeks and Hebrews, and is found to-day amongst the Russians and Cossacks and Tartars of the Steppe, and the mountaineers of the Urals and Carpathians. Even in Sicily, in 1742, a wooden harmonicon was described under the name of the Xylonganum, and the wooden slips analogous to the nigger-bones laid on strings are mentioned as forming a German ‘music-maker’ more than three centuries ago. In 1830 Gussikow, a Russian, made a tour of Europe with a xylophone composed of wood and straws, the straws taking the place of the strings and tapes; and straws, it may be as well to observe, are excellent substitutes for the strings in a glass harmonicon. There is no difference in the treatment of these suspenders, and the arrangement given in our plan herewith does equally well for both.

Of the instrument very little explanation is required. A number of pieces of wood, metal, bones, or stones are selected which will give the required tone when struck by a small hammer, and these are arranged on strings which are tightened over a shallow wooden box, being fastened with a small lump of sealing-wax to keep them in position. The harder the wood chosen for the palettes the better will be the sound; and if one good piece can be met with to give the set, the various sizes will give the tones almost without any variation. The straighter the grain the truer the sound; and though hard wood, such as oak and mahogany, is as a rule the best, yet pieces of ordinary deal will sometimes be found more musical. Some years ago we remember hearing a harmonicon made entirely out of a bundle of firewood scattered along a couple of waxed threads, and admirably was it played by the maker. There being no sustaining power in the materials, only very rapid tunes could be performed satisfactorily, but the sailor’s hornpipe on this bundle-wood harmonicon was quite a success. The notes being clear, sharp, and unmistakable, the very quick country dance and marching tunes could be delivered with great effect owing to there being no blurring of sounds. In combination with a piano or violin the xylophone is not to be despised, and in the orchestras wherein it has now been introduced it will probably prove more effective than is generally supposed. Being cheap, and easily made, it is worth having a try at.

CHAPTER XLIX.—ÆOLIAN HARPS, AND HOW TO MAKE THEM.

The simplest pattern of Æolian harp is that which fits into any ordinary window frame. A box of thin straight-grained, well-planed deal is glued together, having a length equal to that of the width of the window for which it is destined, a depth of four or five inches, and a breadth of five or six inches. The wood of which it is made is carefully planed on both sides, and is not over an eighth of an inch in thickness, and the joints are as true and clean as it is possible to make them. The more carefully this box is made the better will be the tone of the instrument.

The bridges in all Æolian harps are of some hard wood, such as oak, box, or elm, and are glued on to the face of the sounding-case. They are about half an inch high and a quarter of an inch thick. The strings are of catgut tightened by pegs screwed into the edges of the case, which are occasionally strengthened for the purpose by a thin fillet of beech. The strings are tuned in unison. Three inches above them is placed a thin board, supported on four pegs, one at each corner of the case. The harp is rested on the bottom of the window frame, and the sash is brought down on the upper board. The air passes in and out between it and the sounding-box, and the strings being set in vibration give off that soft, melodious murmur which, in a more subdued tone, is heard near telegraph posts when the wires are shaken by the wind.