Mercury

Mercury (pronounced mur-kyuh-ree)

(1) In chemistry, a heavy, silver-white, highly toxic metallic element (uniquely liquid at room temperature), once widely used in barometers & thermometers and still a component of pesticides & pharmaceutical preparations.  In industrial use it provides the reflecting surface of mirrors, can still be a part of dental amalgams and is used in some switches, mercury-vapor lamps, and other electric apparatus.  It’s also used as a catalyst in laboratories.  Symbol: Hg; atomic weight: 200.59; atomic number: 80; specific gravity: 13.546 at 20°C; freezing point: −38.9°C; boiling point: 357°C.  It’s known also as quicksilver or hydrargyrum.

(2) In clinical pharmacology, the metal as used in various organic and inorganic compounds, used usually to treat infections of the skin.

(3) In mythology, the Roman god who served as messenger of the gods and was also the god of commerce, thievery, eloquence, and science, identified with the Greek god Hermes (initial capital letter).

(4) In astronomy, the planet nearest the sun, having a diameter of 3,031 miles (4,878 km), a mean distance from the sun of 36 million miles (57.9 million km), and a period of revolution of 87.96 days, and having no satellites; the smallest planet in the solar system (diameter and mass: respectively 38 and 5.4% that of earth) (initial capital letter).

(5) Borrowing from mythology, a messenger, especially a carrier of news (largely archaic).

(6) In botany, any plant belonging to the genus Mercurialis, of the spurge family, especially the poisonous, weedy M. perennis of Europe.  Historically, it was most associated with the annual mercury (Mercurialis annua), once cultivated for medicinal properties (the fourteenth century French mercury or herb mercury).

(7) In botany, a similar edible plant (Blitum bonus-henricus), otherwise known since the fifteenth century as English mercury or allgood.

(8) In botany, in eighteenth century US regional use, the poison oak or poison ivy.

(9) In the history of US aerospace, one of a series of U.S. spacecraft, carrying one astronaut and the first US vehicle to achieve suborbital and orbital manned spaceflights (initial capital letter).

(10) Liveliness, volatility (obsolete since the mid-nineteenth century).

1300–1350: From the Middle English Mercurie, from the Medieval Latin, from the Classical Latin Mercurius (messenger of Jupiter, god of commerce) and related to merx (merchandise),  Mercury, mercuriality & mercurialist are nouns, mercurial is a noun & adjective, mercurous, intramercurial & mercuric are adjectives and mercurially is an adverb; the noun plural is mercuries.

The late fourteenth century adjective mercurial (pertaining to or under the influence of the planet Mercury) evolved by the 1590s to include the sense “pertaining to the god Mercury, having the form or qualities attributed to Mercury (a reference to his role as god of trade or as herald and guide)”.  The meaning “light-hearted, sprightly, volatile, changeable, quick” was in use by the 1640s and was intended to suggest the qualities supposed to characterize those born under the planet Mercury, these based on the conduct of the god Mercury (which seems a generous interpretation given some of his antics), probably also partly by association with the qualities of quicksilver. A variant in this sense was the now rare noun mercurious, in use by the 1590s.  The adjective mercuric (relating to or containing mercury) dates from 1828 and in chemistry applied specifically applied to compounds in which each atom of mercury was regarded as bivalent.  Mercurous was by the 1840s applied to those in which two atoms of mercury are regarded as forming a bivalent radical. 

In the mythology of Antiquity, the Roman Mercury (or Mercurius) was identified with the Greek Hermes, protecting travelers in general and merchants in particular.  He was depicted as the messenger of Jupiter and in some tales even as his agent in some of Jupiter’s amorous ventures (famously in Amphytrion (circa 188 BC) by the playwright Titus Maccius Plautus (circa 254–184 BC)).  The location of Rome’s first Temple of Mercury was chosen because it was so close to both the port and the commercial precinct, the god of commerce thus well-placed.  Although it’s not entirely certain, the structure was thought to date from 496 BC and historians note the sanctuary was built outside the pomerium (the city’s religious boundary), leading to speculation the cult may have been of foreign origin.  Mercury’s attributes included the caduceus (the wand), a variety of very fetching broad-brimmed hats, winged sandals (essential for one so “fleet of foot” and the purse (symbolizing the profits merchants gained from their trade).  The tales from Antiquity are not consistent (and in some cases contradictory but Mercury in some traditions was the father of Evander or of Lares (charged with the supervision of crossroads and prosperity); Lares was born after Mercury raped Lara, the water Nymph in the kingdom of the dead.  The identification of Mercury with the Greek Hermes was ancient but in the early medieval period he was linked also with the Germanic Woden and noting his role as a messenger and conveyor of information, since the mid-seventeenth century Mercury was often used as a name for newspapers although has been a common name for a newspaper and some critics have adapted it for their own purposes: In Australia the newspaper the Hobart Mercury was in the 1980s sometimes derisively called the “Hobart Mockery”.

The phrase “mad as a hatter” came from idiomatic English use and was applied to someone thought “insane or crazy”; it’s thus a companion to “barking mad” and “mad as a meat axe”.  It’s believed the origin lay in observation of those employed on the hat-making industry in the nineteenth century; they were prone to mercury poisoning from the chemicals used to make felt.  The manifestations of the condition (known as erethism) included neurological symptoms such as confusion, an inability to maintain concentration, trembling & twitching, irritability and bouts of sustained irrational behaviour, the cognative decline usually severe and sustained.  In the vernacular of the age, the unfortunate occupation hazard in industrial millinery was known as the “hatters' shakes”.  “Mad as a hatter” was in use by the early 1800s and was picked up by Lewis Carroll (pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898)) for the memorable character of the Mad Hatter in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865).

Auto castrato: Hat maker Boston Corbett (born Thomas Corbett (1832-circa 1890).

London-born Mr Corbett’s family emigrated to the US when he was young and, settling in the north-east, he established himself as a hat-maker, then a major industry.  His life appears to have been settled until in 1858 he suffered the tragic loss of his wife and first born during childbirth, his grief leading to chronic alcoholism and his downward spiral continued until a Boston street evangelist converted him to Christianity, the consequence of which he became something like what would come to be called a “born again”.  So intense was his newfound faith he forswore alcohol, grew his hair and beard long to resemble Jesus, adopted the name Boston Corbett in honor of the city of his spiritual rebirth and was baptised by a Methodist minister.

Whether it was the presence of the Lord or the result of his derangement from a combination of mercury poisoning and alcohol abuse, his religious zeal can’t be denied because in 1858 while preaching in the street, he was propositioned by a brace of prostitutes who must have be quite demonstrative because immediately be became aroused and, disgusted by his moral weakness, repaired to his home where, using a pair of milliners scissors, he cut an incision in his scrotum, then removed his testicles.  He may have had in mind a passage from Scripture: “For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.” (Matthew 19:12, King James Version of the Bible (KJV, 1611)).  The theological assurance must have been bracing because after his impromptu act of self-castration, not until he’s completed his prayers, enjoyed his dinner and taken his evening stroll through the city did he admit himself to Massachusetts General Hospital.

Service in the Union Army during the US Civil War (1861-1965) followed and he distinguished himself in that bloody slaughter by displaying bravery to the point of being wholly indifferent to the prospect of death, presumably on the basis whatever happened would be God’s will although he may have approached combat in the spirit of one passage in Joseph Heller’s (1923-1999) Catch-22 (1961): “They’re not going to send a crazy man out to be killed, are they?”  “Who else will go?”  Mr Corbett was still with his unit when, ten days after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865; US president 1861-1865), he was part of a detachment tasked with hunting don the gunman, actor John Wilkes Booth (1838–1865); midway during the pursuit he led a church service in which he included the blessing: “O Lord, lay not innocent blood to our charge, but bring the guilty speedily to punishment.”

Depiction of the mad hatter’s tea party by Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914) in an edition called Nursery Alice (1890), an abridged version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland intended for children under five (the original drawing now held by the British Museum).  The book contained 20 illustrations by Sir John who also provided the artwork for the full-length publication.  A fine craftsman, Sir John was noted also for his moustache which “out-Nietzsched” Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900).  Despite much later speculation, no evidence has ever emerged to suggest Lewis Carroll was under the influence of drugs when writing the “Alice” books.   

Booth eventually was traced to a tobacco barn in Virginia and, allegedly, after negotiations for his surrender proved fruitless, the structure was set ablaze and it was at this point Mr Corbett shot Booth who died shortly afterwards.  That didn’t please the authorities which, suspicious a wider conspiracy (orchestrated by forces “in the South” might be afoot, wished to have the suspect alive to be interrogated.  Mr Corban’s assertion “God Almighty directed me to” was thought not a great deal of help.  Although he escaped punishment for his act, his subsequent life was unhappy and struggling to find gainful employment, he worked as an itinerant preacher but was haunted by the belief he was being pursued by those seeking revenge for Booth's death.  Institutionalised in 1886, after two years he escaped the lunatic asylum and vanished and although there are accounts of him drowning, being murdered by ex-Confederate soldiers and dying in a fire, the rest of his life remains a mystery. 

Vintage wall thermometer: As the temperature increased, the mercury expanded in volume and rose (hence "mercury rising").  The red colour was achieved with the addition of a dye.

The origin of the chemical name of mercury (Hg) reflects the influence of Scientific Latin on early-modern chemistry; Hg is an abbreviation of the Latin name of the element: hydrargium (literally “water-silver”), from the Ancient Greek hydrargyros (liquid silver), an allusion to its unique quality of being a silvery liquid when at room temperature (all other metals being solid).  The older English name was quicksilver (still prevalent in literary & poetic circles) which was coined in the sense of “living silver”, a reference to the liquid tending to move “like a living thing” when provoked with the slight provocation.  The “quick” referred not to speed but “alive” in the sense of the Biblical phrase “the quick and the dead”.  Alchemists called it azoth and in medical and sometimes chemical use that’s still occasionally seen.  As late as the fifteenth century, in mainstream Western science the orthodox view was that mercury was one of the elemental principles thought present in all metals.  In Antiquity, it was prepared from cinnabar and was then one of the seven known metals (bodies terrestrial), coupled in astrology and alchemy with the seven known heavenly bodies (the others: Sun/gold, Moon/silver, Mars/iron, Saturn/lead, Jupiter/tin, Venus/copper.  In idiomatic use, (with a definite article), because of the use in barometers & thermometers, “the mercury” was a reference to temperature thus “mercury rising” meant “warmer”, the use dating from the seventeenth century and it has persisted even as the devices have moved to digital technology.  The name mercury was adopted because the stuff flows quickly about, recalling the Roman god who was the “swift-footed messenger of the gods”.

The same rationale appealed to the astronomers of Antiquity who noted the swift movement of the planet which required only 88 days for each solar orbit.  Mercury is sometimes visible from the Earth as a morning or evening star and in our solar system and is the both the smallest and the closest planet to the Sun.  Second in density only to Earth, it’s a lifeless (as far as is known or seems possible) place with a cratered surface which makes it not dissimilar in appearance to Earth's Moon.  It behaves differently from Earth in that the rotational period of 58.6 days is two-thirds of its 88-day annual orbit, thus it makes three full axial rotations every two years.  The atmosphere is close to non-existent, something which, combined with the rotational & orbital dynamics and the proximity to the Sun produces rapid radiational cooling on its dark side, meaning the temperature range is greater than any other planet in our solar system (466°-184°C (870°-300°F)).  Being so close to the Sun, Mercury is visible only shortly before sunrise or after sunset, observation further hindered by Earth’s dust & pollution, this distorting the planet’s light which obliquely must pass through the lower atmosphere.  It wasn’t until circa 1300 that the Classical Latin name for the planet was adopted in English while a (presumably hypothetical) resident of the place was by 1755 a Mercurian or a century later as Mercurean.  The novel adjective intramercurial (being within the orbit of the planet Mercury) was coined in 1859 to describe a hypothetical planet orbiting between Mercury and the Sun.  The idea had existed among French astronomers since the 1840s but became a matter of some debate between 1860-1869 until observations of solar eclipses finally debunked the notion.  The origin of the noun amalgamation (act of compounding mercury with another metal), dating from the 1610s, was a noun of action from archaic verb amalgam (to alloy with mercury), the figurative, non-chemical sense of “a combining of different things into one uniform whole” in use by 1775.

Genuinely different and obvious a cut above a Ford: 1939 Mercury 8 Coupe.

Reflecting the philosophy of Henry Ford which put a premium on engineering and price, concepts like product differentiation & multi-brand market segmentation came late to the Ford Motor Company (FoMoCo).  Unlike General Motors (GM) which in the 1920s fielded as many as nine brand-names (and even by 1940 still had six), it wasn’t until 1938 that Ford added a third, using until then just Ford and Lincoln and even they operated as separate companies whereas GM maintained a divisional structure and an originally strictly defined hierarchy.  The debut in 1938 of the Mercury label, sitting on the pricing scale between Ford and Lincoln made sense in a way that, twenty years on, Edsel never did and, until internal cannibalization began in the 1960s, the Mercury brand worked well enough.  Even after that, the marketing momentum accrued over decades maintained Mercury’s viability and it wasn’t shuttered until 2011, a victim of the industry’s restructuring after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC 2008-2012).  Debatably, the Mercury brand may yet prove useful and, should a niche emerge, there may be a resurrection, Ford maintaining registration of the trademark.

A (slightly) better Ford LTD: 1969 Mercury Marquis Brougham four-door hardtop.

Perhaps it was the experience of GM which had discouraged FoMoCo.  Although Harvard had begun awarding MBAs since 1908, history unfortunately doesn’t record whether any of them were involved in the brand-name proliferation decision of the mid 1920s which saw the introduction of companion offerings to four of GM’s five existing divisions, only the entry-level Chevrolet not augmented.  The new brands, slotted above or below depending on where the perceived price-gap existed, mean GM suddenly was marketing nine products (rungs on the "Sloan ladder") in competition with Ford offering two and one probably didn’t need a MBA to conclude only one approach was at least tending towards being correct.  As things turned out, GM’s approach was never given the chance fully to explore the possibilities, the effects of the Great Depression of the 1930s suppressing demand in the economy to an extent then not in living memory, necessitating downsizing in just about every industrial sector.  Axed by GM in 1931 was Viking (Oldsmobile’s companion), Marquette (added to Buick) and Oakland (actually usurped by its nominal companion, Pontiac).  LaSalle (a lower-priced Cadillac) survived the cull… for a while.

The so-called “Sloan ladder of success” was conceived by Alfred P Sloan (1875–1966; president of General Motors (GM) 1923-1937 and chairman of the board 1937-1946)) and the idea was that as a customer’s wealth increased, they would take the “next step on the ladder”; by 1930 that ladder had nine rungs with Chevrolet at the bottom and Cadillac the top.  That meant the “middle class” had seven GM brands to choose from, all positioned at ascending “price points” and a customer could advertise their increasing wealth and upward social mobility by moving up a rung, trading in their car for one a rung (or more) up in the hierarchy.  For the system to work, it was important the products of one division not trespass into the bailiwick of another and in Mr Sloan's time, there was the intra-corporate discipline to see this was enforced.

Of course, while one can climb a ladder, one can also climb down and a former Cadillac buyer finding themselves in circumstances so reduced as to have to visit the Chevrolet dealer might have been said to be on the “Sloan ladder of failure”.  Nor was it socially obligatory for the rich to ascend to the top rung.  Before her first husband became president, Jacqueline Kennedy (1929-1994; US First Lady 1961-1963) went to old Joe Kennedy (1888–1969) and told him she’d like to buy a Ford Thunderbird on the basis: “What could be More American than that?”  Promptly she was told: “The Kennedys drive Buicks!”  Actually even that wasn’t always true because the car Ted Kennedy (1932–2009) drove off a bridge in the “Chappaquiddick Incident” was a 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88 (not even the most expensive Oldsmobile) which belonged to his mother.  The crash happened shortly before midnight on 18 July 1969, after the then senator had left a cocktail party in the company of Mary Jo Kopechne (1940-1969) who had worked on Robert F Kennedy’s (RFK, 1925–1968; US attorney general 1961-1964) presidential campaign in 1968.  Ms Kopechne died in the crash, Senator Kennedy not reporting the matter for more than ten hours after he left the scene.  The ladder was fully evolved by 1929, the rungs tagged thus:

Chevrolet: The entry-level range with the lowest price; a high volume “value for money” pitch using the concept perfected by Ford's Model T (1908-1927).

Pontiac: Introduced in 1926, the Pontiac would once perhaps have been called the “Chevrolet Deluxe” but it was in the 1920s the ages of mass-consumerism and modern marketing began; the creation of a separate nameplate was an indication of how the techniques of capitalism were evolving.

Oldsmobile: Before the brand-name proliferation, Oldsmobile was GM’s classic “middle-class” car, sitting between Chevrolet and Buick.

Marquette: Marquette existed only between 1929–1930 and was a product of a gap existing in Mr Sloan’s price-point structure between Oldsmobile and Buick.  Again, the view was it was better to have a defined range in the segment rather than an “Oldsmobile Deluxe” or dilute the appeal of the next rung with a lower-cost Buick.

Oakland: Oakland was unusual in that it pre-existed Pontiac, the latter introduced as Oakland’s more expensive companion but, because Pontiac proved much more successful, it would survive the later cull while Oakland would be axed.

Buick: The classic upper-middle-class brand, offering luxury and performance but without the exclusivity of a Cadillac.

Viking: Another short-lived (1929–1930) venture, Viking was the premium companion to Oldsmobile and slotted between Buick and LaSalle.

LaSalle: Best thought of as cheaper Cadillac, it was another of the brands there to avoid diluting things with an “entry level Cadillac” which of course it was in all but name.

Cadillac: The top rung, competing not only high-end domestic brands like Packard, Duesenberg and Lincoln but also the best of the Europeans.

The effects of the Great Depression meant the experiment didn’t last and GM would soon to revert to six divisions, the newcomers Viking and Marquette axed while Pontiac, which had proved both more successful and profitable than the shuttered Oakland, survived, joining LaSalle which lingered until 1940 and then there were five.  Even then five was debatably at least one too many but the ladder survived into the post-war years when economic conditions suited the structure and by the mid-1950s both Ford and Chrysler were emulating the model although for both it proved a brief fling.  By the twenty-first century, GM was down to three (Chevrolet, Buick & Cadillac), Ford two (Ford & Lincoln) and Chrysler two (Dodge & Chrysler (although they separated the pickup business as RAM)).

Ford in the late 1930s had clearly been thinking about how to cover the widely understood "price-points" in the market, most of which existed between the mass-market Fords and the big Lincolns, the latter a very expensive range.  One toe in the water of brand-proliferation was the creation in 1937 of "De Luxe Ford" which, despite some of the hints in the advertising, was neither a separate company nor even a division; it was described by historians of the industry as "a marque within a marque" which, organizationally, was generous.  Structurally, this seems little different to the approach the company had been using since 1930 when it introduced a “Deluxe” trim option for certain models which could be ordered to make the “standard” Ford a little better appointed but the 1937 De Luxe Fords were more plausibly different because some relative minor changes to panels and detailing did make the two “marques” visually distinct.  The Deluxe vs De Luxe spelling was perhaps a touch too subtle to be noticed by many.     

The De Luxe Ford line was deliberately positioned between Ford and Lincoln but intriguingly, at the same time, Ford introduced both a new, lower priced V12 Lincoln called the Lincoln-Zephyr and the Mercury range, all three of these ventures contesting the same, already crowded, space.  The De Luxe Ford “marque” would last only until 1940 although Ford’s Deluxe option remained on the books; it’s doubtful many outside Ford’s advertising agency noticed and to make things murkier still, in the late 1940s Ford also sold a "Super Deluxe".  It would seem Ford was hedging its bets and may have decided to persist with whichever of Mercury and De Luxe Ford proved most successful and as things transpired, that was Mercury so as the 1941 model year dawned, in the dealers’ brochures there were Fords, Mercurys, Lincoln-Zephyrs & Lincolns.  World War II of course intervened and when production resumed after the end of hostilities, that was simplified to Fords, Mercury & Lincoln, remaining that way until the mid-1950s when in a booming economy, the temptation to proliferate proved irresistible and the exclusive Continental division was created, followed by the infamous Edsel, the model spread of which over-lapped the pricing of both Ford and Mercury, an approach which seems to go beyond hedging.  The Continental experiment lasted barely two seasons and the Edsel just three, the latter a debacle which remains a case study in marketing departments.

A natural Mercury: 1955 Ford Thunderbird.

So by 1960 the corporation again offered just Fords, Mercurys & Lincolns but it was a troubled time for the latter, the huge Lincolns of the late 1950s, although technically quite an achievement in body engineering, had proved so unsuccessful that Ford’s new management seriously considered closing it down as well but it was saved when handed a prototype Ford Thunderbird coupé which was developed into the famous Lincolns of 1961-1969, remembered chiefly for the romantic four-door convertibles and being the cabriolet in which John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) was assassinated.  That was one of the Thunderbird’s footnotes in corporate history, the other being that when introduced in 1955 it was the first Ford blatantly to intrude on what, according to marketing theory, should have been the domain of Mercury, home of the up-market offerings.

Cannibalizing the corporation: 1965 Ford LTD.

The Thunderbird though was just the first act of trespass and fancier Fords continued to appear, the landmark being the LTD, which began in 1965 as a luxury trim-package for the Galaxie, something which proved so popular it soon became model in its own right, encouraging a host of imitators from the mass-market competition, the most successful of which was Chevrolet’s Caprice (that innovation in retrospect the first nail in the coffins of the now shuttered Pontiac & Oldsmobile).  However, like Pontiac & Oldsmobile, Mercury would endure for decades, all three surviving before being sacrificed in the wake of the GFC and between the debut of the LTD and the end of the line, there were many successful years but the rationale for the existence of Mercury which had been so well defined in 1938 when there was genuine product differentiation and a strict maintenance of price points, gradually was dissipated to the point that with the odd exception (such as the wildly successfully Mercury Cougars of the late 1960s), Fords and Lincolns were allowed to become little more than competitors in the same space and the brand never developed the sort of devoted following which might have transcended the sameness.  By the twenty-first century, there were few reasons to buy a Mercury because a Ford could be ordered in essentially identical form, usually for a little less money.

1968 Mercury Cougar GT-E 427: The tennis court hints at the target market, the GT-E very much a car for a gentleman who wanted the Mustang's performance without the blue-collar association.  A long wheelbase Food Mustang with a higher specification, the original Mercury Cougar (1967-1970) was the brand's great success story; not only over eight generations and 35-odd seasons was it the division's biggest-selling nameplate, it was also the last genuinely successful Mercury.  With only 357 made, the 1968 GT-E 427 was a tiny part of that (there were also 37 with the less desirable 428 V8, four of which were ordered with a four-speed manual transmission) but is remembered as the last use of the Le Mans winning 427 cubic inch (7.0 litre) V8 and the corporation's only 427 pony-car.  Civilized with hydraulic valve lifters and an automatic transmission, it was a glimpse of what might have been had Ford, as it once planned, put the 427 in a Mustang.

Another big, dangerous cat: Advertisement for the 1976 Mercury Cougar.  Despite the apparent implications, not until early in the twenty-first century would “cougar” pick up the informal meaning: “an older woman who seeks sexual relationships with much younger men”; Mercury truly was ahead of the linguistic curve.

The big cats have provided names for manufacturers to use for cars; there have been Tigers, Lions, Jaguars, Cheetahs and Leopards (there is even a Leopard tank, in production since 1965 and now in its third generation) and there was also the Mercury Cougar some three million of which were sold although the more forgettable models produced after the late 1970s bore scant resemblance, physically or conceptually to the classic original.  The press reports in 1967 made much of Ford’s admission the Mercury was an attempt to “build a Jaguar”, noting the statement was intended not to be read literally but rather an indication of a wish to build the sort of car which would appeal to someone who would buy a Jaguar.  The consensus at the time was Mercury had succeeded in building a fine car although whether many Jaguar customers were convinced isn’t known.  Some of the Cougars produced in the first four seasons of its long life were legitimate parts of the muscle car ecosystem but by 1976 when the above advertisement appeared, built on the intermediate Ford Torino’s platform, the Cougar it was little more than a slightly smaller Ford Thunderbird; that was bad enough but things would get worse.     

Xylo-punk band Crazy and the Brains performing Lindsay Lohan, recorded live, Mercury Lounge, New York City, 2013.  Punk bands are said still not widely to have adopted the xylophone.