TRUMPET, Marine, is a musical instrument consisting of three tables, which form its triangular body. It has a very long neck with one single string, very thick, mounted on a bridge, which is firm on one side, but tremulous on the other. It is struck by a bow with one hand, and with the other the string is pressed or stopped on the neck by the thumb.
It is the trembling of the bridge, when struck, that makes it imitate the sound of a trumpet, which it does to that perfection, that it is scarcely possible to distinguish the one from the other. And this is what has given it the denomination of trumpet-marine, though, in propriety, it be a kind of monochord. Of the six divisions marked on the neck of the instrument, the first makes a fifth with the open chord, the second an octave, and so on for the rest, corresponding with the intervals of the military trumpet.