VOCAL IMITATION, AND VENTRILOQUISM. 



283 



art of what is called ventriloquism,* of which no very plausible explanation 

 has hitherto been offered to the world. The practitioner of this occult 

 art is well known to have a power of modifying his voice in such a manner 

 as to imitate the voices of different persons conversing at a considerable 

 distance from each other, ana in very different tones. And hence the first 

 impression which this ingenious trick or exhibition produced on the world, 

 was that of the artist's possessing a double or triple larynx ; the additional 

 larynxes being supposed to be seated still deeper in the chest than the 

 lowermost of the two that belong to birds : whence indeed the name of 

 VENTRILOQUISM or BELLY-SPEAKING. Mr. Gough has attempted, in the 

 Memoirs of the Manchester Society, to resolve the whole into the phse- 

 nomena of echoes ; the ventriloquist being conceived by him on all occa- 

 sions to confine himself to a room well disposed for echoes in various parts 

 of it, and merely to produce false voices by directing his natural voice in 

 a straight Hne towards such echoing parts, instead of in a straight line to- 

 wards the audience ; who, upon this view of the subject, are supposed to 

 be artfully placed on one or both sides of the ventriloquist. It is sufficient 

 to observe, in opposition to this conjecture, that it does not account for 

 the perfect quiescence of the mouth and cheeks of the performer while 

 employing his feigned voices ; and that an adept in the art, like Mr. Fitz- 

 james, or Mr. Alexander, is wholly indifferent to the room in which he 

 practises, and will allow another person to choose a room for him. Mr. 

 jFitzjames is a native of France ; and his vocal arts and vocal powers have 

 been paid particular attention to by M. Richerand, one of the most popu- 

 lar French physiologists of the day ; who has also examined the vocal or- 

 gans of other ventriloquists, and observes, as the result of his investigations, 

 that although there is little or no motion in the cheeks during the art of 

 speaking, there is a considerable demand and expenditure of air ; the 

 ventriloquist always inhaling deeply before he commences his deception, 

 passing a part of the air thus inhaled through his nostrils, and being able to 

 continue his various voices as long as the inspired air may last, or till he 

 has inhaled a fresh supply. 



This view of the subject induced M. Richerand to relinquish the old 

 hypothesis of a kind of vocal organ being seated in the stomach, to w^hich we 

 have already adverted, and which he had formerly embraced ; though it does 

 not appear that he has very distinctly adopted any other in its stead : " At 

 first," says he, " I had conjectured that a great part of the air expelled by 

 expiration, did not pass out by the mouth and nostrils, but was swallowed and 

 carried into the stomach ; and, being reflected in some part of the digestive 

 canal, gives rise to a real echo ; but having afterwards more attentively ob- 

 served this curious pha3nomenon in Mr. Fitzjames, who exhibits it in its 

 greatest perfection, I was soon convinced that the name of ventriloquism 

 is by no means apphcable ; since the whole of its mechanism consists in a 

 slow gradual expiration ; in which the artist either influences at his will the 

 surrounding muscles of the chest, or keeps down the epiglottis by the ba^e 

 of the tongue, the point of which is not protruded beyond the arch of the 

 teeth, "t 



M. De la Chapelle, without offering any particular explanation of this 

 curious art, published, in 1772, an ingenious work, in which he attempted 

 to prove that ventriloquism is of a very ancient date ; and that it formed 



* Stud, of Med. i. p. 463. edit. i. 



t Nouveaux Elemens de Physiologie, in loc, Paris, 1804. 



