Text: 1) A hunting-horn of a straight or curved form. 2) A copper instrument of the horn quality of tone, but of less compass, furnished with keys. The tone is sweet, powerful and distinct; it has rarely been employed in the orchaestra. There are bugle horns in C, B flat, and E flat, each capable of producing its generator and 7 harmonics. The ventil-horn is an improvement upon the bugle. The word bugle, from the Anglo-Saxon buge, to bend or curve, was anciently applied to many things of a curved shape, thus, the head of a bishop's crozier was called the bugle, and the crozier itself the bugle-rod. The handle of a kettle, basket handles, and a peculiar sort of elongated glass-bead are each called by the name bugle. Some writers derive the word from bowgle or bougle, a bull, on the ground that the earliest horns were bull's horns, and that the earliest representations of hunting horns are in shape like bull's horn.

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Source: 125