oice up and 'make effect' was very natural; for art goes
after bread, and a high C with the chest voice often realizes an
income of thousands to its fortunate possessor. Roger has made a
laudable exception; his beautiful use of the falsetto certainly
produces a more agreeable effect than the forced chest tones so
unnatural to the organ of many a singer. How widespread is this
mistaken notion, that the use of the falsetto is entirely contrary
to art, we hear frequently enough in the expressions of individuals
when some unlucky tenor happens to get caught on one of these
tabooed falsetto tones. Thus the school founded by Duprez,
important in itself, has called into life a manner of singing, the
ruinous consequences of which we can see daily."

But whatever may be the true reason or reasons, the fact that we have
very few singers of eminence as compared with former ages, and that
vocal art in general has gone down, is undisputed, and men have set
themselves to remedy the evil by trying to ascertain the actual process
by which the voice is produced, thinking that if they could but find
this out there would be a true scientific basis upon which to found a
way of teaching singing--or as I should rather say, of training
voices--which would be sure and unerring.

* * * * *

The experiments of the great physiologist Johannes Mueller are well
known, and they have been followed up by others. But they were made upon
dissected larynges, and as various teachers of singing started the most
conflicting theories as to how the process shown by Mueller was carried
on in the living subject, and treated the voices of their pupils
accordingly, these investigations have perhaps on the whole done more
harm than good. Science was made responsible for the blunders of those
who attempted to be guided by it. And thus it has happened that when at
a later period further trials were made, but this time upon the living
subject, and in the act of singing, they were received with indifference
and distrust. Only very lately teachers of vocal music have begun to
find out that here are facts put before them which cannot be gainsaid,
and that if these investigations do nothing else, they at any rate make
them acquainted with the exact nature of the vocal organ, and what it
will bear and what it will not bear.

THE VOCAL ORGAN AS A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT.

"Physiol