510 
NATURE 
[March .9. 1883 
were then described. The larynx of the child, like its 
head, is large relatively to the rest of the body. At the 
age of fourteen or fifteen, rather earlier in girls than in 
boys, the vocal apparatus enlarges and strengthens. In 
boys the vocal chords about double in length ; in girls 
they increase from five to seven. In the latter case the 
pitch of the voice is not materially altered; in the male it 
usually descends an octave or more. 
Garcia adopted the division of Registers into three, 
namely, the chest, falsetto, and head voice, due originally 
to Miiller. This remains the most practical mode of 
classification, though the word falsetto is misleading, 
being liable to confusion with the artificial male voice 
bearing the same name, and may well be replaced by the 
phrase Medium. The term register has been enveloped 
in much professional mystery, and has been far too much 
refined upon. There has also beena confusion of octaves, 
from which even Madame Seiler is not free, due mainly 
to the modern and objectionable method of scoring music 
for the tenor voice in the soprano clef, and an octave too 
high. Register evidently marks an alteration of mechan- 
ism in the voice-reed and resonator to enable it to obtain 
the very remarkable compass, amounting to nearly five 
octaves, of which the human voice is possessed. Single 
voices run to three octaves or more. Catalani had 33; 
Bastardella, heard by Mozart in 1770, had the same. 
Madame Carlotta Patti can reach Gginalt. Bennati, a 
tenor, had three full octaves, and Tamberlik reached the 
Ce of 544 double vibrations. 
[he words Head and Chest obviously only represent 
subjective sensations which accompany the shifted me- 
chanism. In many parts of the voice similar notes can 
be reached iu two rezisters, but with different force and 
quality, on either side of the break. 
In using chest-voice the vibration can be seen to involve 
the whole vocal chord and the arytoenoid cartilages. At 
about A in the male and C in the female the chords act 
alone, though the first mechanism can by an effort be 
continued. The second form of vibration takes the voice 
up to F, the usual limit of bass voices and of the chest 
register. Above the F the chords are stated to lengthen, 
giving by a second elongation the second series of the 
chest register, which forms the bulk of the tenor compass, 
the remainder being formed by a variable number of fal- 
setto notes. These seem to be produced by a thinning 
of the edges of the chords. Czermak lighted the larynx 
of thin persons strongly frorn the outside, and found that 
sufficient light was transmitted to show a decided increase 
of transparency in the chords at this point. All observers 
agree in placing this change, both in males and females, 
between F and Fg. In this region, common to both 
males and females, an amusing experiment can be made 
by causing a tenor male and a contralto female singer to 
execute the same passage behind a screen, or in an 
adjoining room. It is difficult, and at times impossible, 
to discover the sex of the singer from the quality of the 
tone. There still remains among male voices the curious 
and only partially explained counter-tenor. Sometimes 
by arrest of development or by accident the boy’s compass 
is retained in after-life. This accident may be quite inde- 
pendent of masculinity, as those who have heard lusty, 
rubicund Yorkshiremen, with their wives and children 
round them, trolling out a sweet treble in glees on the 
terraces of the Crystal Palace after the Handel Festival, 
can testify. But besides this rare accident, most basses 
and baritones can cultivate an artificial and peculiar 
voice which most properly bears the name falsetto. Its 
production appears to be in great measure a matter of 
education. It was seemingly commoner in the madri- 
galian epoch and in the time of Queen Elizabeth than it 
isnow. Dr. Bristowe says truly that the mechanism of 
its production is still doubtful, though many attempts 
have been made to determtne it. Such voices are 
not only artificial, but complex and uneven, being a 
compound of high chest notes and others of special 
quality. There is a serious break between the two both 
in production and in quality, which practised singers 
disguise by running the one into the other at different 
places, according as the passage to be sung ascends or 
descends. 
It will have been seen that female voices overlap the 
compass of the male voice by an octave or more. Many 
contraltos take the E on the bass stave, which is well in 
the middle of the bass voice, and a low note for a tenor 
singer. Hence we sometimes hear of female tenors, 
though the effect is usually more peculiar than pleasing. 
Our great English contralto, Madame Patey, however, 
drops to this note with fine effect in Handel's oratorio of 
Solomon, which was written for the exceptional and now 
fortunately obsolete voice of Farinelli. 
In females the break is somewhat higher than in 
males, but the transition to the falsetto takes place at 
the same note G. The contralto does not use the head- 
register, 
This, otherwise called the Small, begins as just stated. 
Its upper limit varies, the extremes having been already 
given. Mozart wrote the fine air G47 Anguiz d’/nferno 
in the “Magic Flute” for such an exceptional voice 
reaching to F in alt. A commoner and perhaps plea- 
santer limit is the C below this. 
All authorities agree in describing a curious appear- 
ance of the glottis in singing these notes. This is a 
folding together of its posterior half with vigorous vibra- 
tion of its anterior part. Such an appearance can only 
be produced either by some stopping of the chords at the 
middle by contact with structures lower down, or by 
overlapping from vigorous approximation of the arytoenoid 
cartilages. The former supposition lacks anatomical 
confirmation, and the latter, which is anatomically pos- 
sible, has the implied, though not the expressed sanction, 
of Helmholtz. The drawing of this app arance is given 
by Madame Seiler, who alone of laryngoscopists, pos~ 
sesses a register peculiar to the female. 
Dr. Stone was materially assisted in his first lecture 
not only by Mr. Behnke, but also by his colleague Dr. 
Felix Semon, who gave admirable demonstrations of the 
healthy larynx, as seen in Mr. Williams, and some other 
pupils of St. Thomas’s Hospital. 
ACCLIMATISATION OF EDIBLE MOLLUSKS 
RECENT and interesting notice by Mr. F. P. 
Marrat of Liverpool, who is an excellent concho- 
logist, mentions the introduction into the Cheshire coast 
of what he calls the “wampum clam,’’ or Venus mer- 
cenaria of Linné ; and he concludes that there is ‘“‘a fair 
prospect of the naturalisation, on the extensive shallow 
shores of Lancashire and Cheshire, of an extremely 
nutritious and highly esteemed food-product, new to 
Great Britain.” The late Prof. Gould says that this 
mollusk is known in Massachusetts under the name of 
“ Quahog,” given to it by the Indians. According to him 
and other American writers on the subject, the true 
“clam” par excellence is Mya arenaria of Linné. I was 
present as a guest at one of the fashionable “clam-feasts”; 
but the muddy flavour derived from the habitat of that 
mollusk does not agreeably commend itself to my palat- 
able recollection. However, chacun a son yott! Mya 
arenaria inhabits the western coasts of the North Pacific 
as well as both sides of the North Atlantic. 
The American oyster (Ostvea virginica of Gmelin = 
O. borealis and O. canadensis of Lamarck) is peculiar to 
North America, and has now found its way into the 
London market. It differs from the common European 
oyster (O. edulis, L.), and is equally variable as regards 
size. O. virginica has been within the last few years 
introduced into the mouth of the Tagus, and is called the 
Portuguese oyster. Our own or “native’’ oyster was 
