The title chosen for the paper I have now to bring before you would more fitly introduce an exhaustive treatise than the few notes and remarks I have to offer. These will necessarily have the character of a very rough sketch or outline only, and, as such, I will ask you to receive them. The subject was suggested to my mind by the magnificent loan collection exhibited in the Royal Albert Hall last year. That collection brought before us evidence of the fertility of resource shown by succeeding generations of men in the adaptation of means towards the great end of the advancement of the musical art; the object being to place in the hands of the performer such results of the mechanical arts as should enable him to take his part in bringing before an audience a realisation of the artistic creation of the composer.