SAXHORN  , the generic name of a

family of brass wind instruments (not horns but valve-bugles) with cup-shaped mouthpieces, invented by Adolphe Sax and in use chiefly in French and Belgian military bands and in small wind-bands . The saxhorns came- into being in 1843, when Sax applied a modification of the valve system invented in Germany in 1815 to the keyed bugle . The saxhorn consists of a conical tube of a calibre greater than that of French horn and trumpet, but smaller than that of the tubas or bombardons, and capable therefore of producing by overblowing the members of the harmonic series from the 2nd to the 8th, in common with the cornets, bugles, valve-trombones and the Wagner tubas . The saxhorns are furnished with ' See Dr Emil Schafhautl's article on musical instruments in sect. iv. of Bericht der Beurteilungscommission bei der allg. deutschen Industrieausstellung, 1854 (Munich, 1855), pp . 169—170 . 2 Georges Kastner, in Manuel general de musique militaire (Paris, 1848), gives full information on the saxhorns, pp . 230 et seq., 246-247, and Pls. xxii. and xxiii .