OF SINGING. 355 



cated, "but they become stretched "by the current of air, and thus acquire 

 the degree of tension necessary for vibration. From the deepest note 

 thus produced, the vocal sounds may be raised about an octave by al- 

 lowing the vocal cords to have a slight degree of tension, which the elas- 

 tic crico-thyroid ligament can give them by drawing the thyroid cartilage 

 toward the cricoid. The medium state, in which the cords are neither 

 relaxed and wrinkled nor stretched, is the condition for the middle notes 

 of the natural register, those which are most easily produced. The or- 

 dinary tones of the voice in speaking are intermediate between these and 

 the deep bass notes. The higher notes are produced and the correspond- 

 ing falsetto notes avoided by the lateral compression of the vocal cords, 

 and by the narrowing of the space beneath them by means of the thyro- 

 arytenoid muscles, and farther by increasing the force of the current of 

 air ; the muscular tension given to the lips of the glottis by the muscles 

 above mentioned must also be taken into account, as contributing to the 

 production of the notes of the natural register." 



An artificial larynx, constructed in such a way as to represent more 

 or less perfectly the preceding conditions, will give rise to Artificial la- 

 sounds analogous to those of the human larynx. Such have r y nx - 

 been made of leather, and, better still, of caoutchouc. 



The narrower the glottis is made, and the more tightly the cords are 

 strained, the more rapidly they will vibrate, and the higher will be the 

 musical note emitted. In an individual the range of the Relations of the 

 voice is rarely three octaves, but the male and female voice, larynx in sing- 

 taken together, may be considered as reaching to four. Gen- mg ' 

 erally, the lowest female note is about an octave higher than the lowest 

 male, a similar remark applying to their highest notes respectively. 

 They differ also intrinsically from each other, just as different wind in- 

 struments sounding the same note give it of a different quality. More- 

 over, in each sex there arc different voices : in the male, the base and the 

 tenor ; in the female, the contralto and soprano. The base usually reach- 

 es lower notes than the tenor, and the tenor higher than the base ; the 

 contralto reaches usually lower notes than the soprano, and the soprano 

 higher ones than the contralto, though these distinctions are by no means 

 uniform. There are, again, intermediate complications : thus the bary- 

 tone intervenes between the base and the tenor, and the mezzo soprano 

 between the contralto and soprano. The chief reason for the difference 

 between the voice in the sexes is in the difference of the length of their 

 vocal cords, which are in men and women* respectively in the proportion 

 of three to two ; but besides this, those personal peculiarities which we 

 so readily recognize in the voices of individuals are due to differences in 

 the structure of the tissues forming the vocal mechanism, or peculiarities 

 in the size and condition of the resonant cavities. Frequently the same 



