1891.] on the Culture of the Singing Voice. 319 



movements towards one another by means of muscles attached to 

 them. Additionally the larynx as a whole can be very freely moved 

 in various directions through the instrumentality of other muscles 

 connecting it with the parts both above and below it. The larynx 

 forms the top of the windpipe, which again is the beginning of the 

 bronchial tubes, which branch off from its lower part and gradually 

 spread into more and more twigs around which are arranged tlie con- 

 stituent parts of the lungs, which form the bellows for the blast of 

 air necessary for the pei-formance of vocal functions. Above, the 

 larynx opens into the throat and the cavities of the mouth, nose, and 

 its accessory cavities, and the naso-pharyngeal space, which serve as 

 a resonator for the vocal vibrations which are produced in the larynx 

 itself. The larynx is lined with a mucous membrane contiguous with 

 that of the neighbouring parts. This mucous membrane in the 

 larynx itself forms two folds, situated one above the other ; the upper 

 of these two reduplications, which is not itself at all concerned in the 

 formation of sound, retains all the characteristics of common mucous 

 membrane. Formerly these upper folds — as there is one on each side 

 of the larynx — were called the ialse vocal cords, but this misleading 

 name has latterly almost entirely been given up in favour of the more 

 significant expression, ventricular bands. The lower reduplications 

 are much more im23ortant, and are inserted in front into the receding 

 angle of the biggest laryngeal cartilage (the thyroid), wliich in the 

 male sex forms outwardly the so-called Adam's aj)plc. Posteriorly 

 they are inserted into two small cartilages called the arytenoid 

 cartilages, which, by means of an articulation or joint, can move 

 very freely and in various directions on the surface of the second 

 large laryngeal cartilage, the cricoid. Theso lower folds of mucous 

 membrane form the so-called true vocal cords and have lost to 

 a great extent the common characteristics of mucous membrane, 

 which are principally rej)laced by numberless elastic fibres in part 

 running parallel to one another, but in part interwoven in the most 

 various directions with one another. These fibres are of unequal 

 length, some of them being inserted in the most f)rojectirjg j)art of 

 the arytenoid cartilages, which has been called the vocal j)i'^^cess, 

 whilst other ones extend very considerably further backwards and are 

 inserted along the body of the arytenoid cartilage itself. This elastic 

 tissue being the sounding element, by the vibrations of which pri- 

 marily sound is engenrlered, it is very likely, as Signer Manuel 

 Garcia first pointed out, that it is through the unequal length of 

 these fibres that the enormous range of the human voica is rendered 

 possible. 



The muscles through which the vocal cords are set in motion, 

 and which indeed regulate the mechanism of the sound produced in 

 the larynx, are subdivided into three groups : the abductors, the 

 adductors, and the tensors of the vocal cords. Of these the two last 

 groups, i.e. the adductors and tensors, are always in unison, whilst 

 their action is antagonistic to that of the abductors. The function 



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