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THE

General Chronicle

AND

LITERARY MAGAZINE.

FOR SEPTEMBER, 1811.

To the EDITOR of the GENERAL CHRONICLE.

SIR, IR-A correspondent has inquired in one of your late numbers (page 249) concerning a musical instrument, which is made of the bulrush, and played upon by the motion of the feet.

Whether I shall be able to give your correspondent any thing Like the description he seeks, I am uncertain; but I think that I shall run no risk of misleading him by saying, that the instrument intended is that which was called by the Romans Scabellum and Scabillum, and which is understood to have been applied to the same purpose as Castanets.

The Scabellum is mentioned in your Description of the Gallery of Antiquities in the British Museum (page 135) under Article 59, in the First Room. That article is a bas-relief, representing Fauns treading grapes; and in the group is a Faun playing on the double pipe, and striking the Scabellum with his foot. In the Description of Ancient Terracottas, lately published by the Trustees of the British Museum, Mr. Taylor Combe quotes under this article Suetonius, in Vit. Calig. c. 54.-Magno tibiarum et scabellorum prosiluit;-and observes, that the Scabellum was either fastened to the foot, as in the statue of a Faun in the Florentine Collection, or was placed, as in the present instance, on the ground, and was struck by the foot. The object is too small to be distinguished in the figure given in your plate, (plate II,) but your correspondent will doubtlessly refer to it at the Museum itself:-It appears to consist of two limbs, so conjoined at one end as to form two sides of an acute angle, while the other is left open. One limb (a) lies horizontally on the ground, while the other (b) makes an acute angle with it, as in this diagram:

b

a

GEN. CHRON. VOL. III. NO. XI.

A 3

I con

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