y can be got over by visiting a butcher
and securing a sheep's head split through from before back. In a few
moments one can learn all the essential facts, including that one of
great practical importance--viz.: that every part of the
resonance-chambers is lined by the same mucous membrane which is also
continued downward into the larynx and the gullet.

It will be thus observed that the throat and nose communicate in the
freest manner behind, and that the only way of closing off the mouth
cavity from the nasal chambers is by means of the tongue and the soft
palate working together. As in the proper use of the tongue and soft
palate lie many of the secrets of the art of the speaker and singer,
special attention must be given to these parts.

The _tongue_, which completely fills the floor of the mouth, is made
up of several muscles of different attachments, which explains why
this organ is so movable. To say that it can with the greatest ease
and rapidity be turned toward every one of the thirty-two points
marked on a mariner's compass, is but to feebly express its capacity
for movements. What we are most concerned with now is its power to
alter the shape of the mouth cavity in every part.

The _soft palate_ is suspended like a curtain from the hard palate,
behind. It is composed of muscles arranged in pairs, and is continued
into a conical tip below known as the _uvula_, and on each side into
folds, the _pillars of the fauces_, between which lie the _tonsils_,
which are in shape like very small almond nuts. When quite normal
these should not protrude much, if at all, beyond the cavity made by
the folds referred to above.

Both the tonsils and the uvula may become so enlarged as to be a
source of awkwardness or more serious evil to the voice-user. They
may, in fact, require operative interference. So serious, however, is
the decision to operate, or the reverse, for the voice-user, that the
author recommends that such operations be entrusted only to
laryngologists who have some knowledge of their influence on
voice-production.

It is of the greatest moment to observe that the quality of tones can
be made to vary in the highest degree by the joint use of the tongue
and soft palate. When in vocalizing the tongue is raised behind and
the soft palate made to approach it, or actually to meet it, the tone
assumes a more or less nasal character. The reason of this is that the
cavity of the mouth proper, or "mouth" in the n