Folk song is too protean an affair to put into any tidy pattern of musical history. Yet even the most conservative popular traditions are liable to growth and change; and if the growth is slow, the change when it comes may be far-reaching and even violent. Hitherto it has been difficult to describe any stage in the evolution of folk song with scientific accuracy, for as a rule we lack a truly precise record of what existed before. But in this connection, a group of workers from the Rumanian Folklore Institute recently completed a survey of unusual scope and importance. Five specialists—musical, literary and choreographic—under the leadership of Miss Emilia Comisel, made a series of expeditions to the Padureni district of Hunedoara in south-western Transylvania.