bones. This consideration alone should suffice to prove the
utter falseness of collar-bone breathing. Collar-bone breathing has also
the additional disadvantage of causing much fatigue, because all the
parts surrounding the upper region of the lungs are hard and unyielding,
so that a great amount of resistance has to be overcome (the "_lutte
vocale_" of French authors), while the very opposite is the case with
the lower part of the lungs.

Mr. Lennox Browne, who was, I believe, the first to direct the attention
of English readers to this matter, says,[C] "Clavicular [collar-bone]
breathing is a method of respiration totally vicious, and to be avoided.
By it the whole lower part of the chest is flattened and drawn in,
instead of being distended; consequently the lower or larger part of the
lungs is not inflated. It is a method never exercised by nature in a
state of health, but only when, from disease, either the abdominal or
chest muscles cannot act; and it is the method least efficacious in
filling, as it is the one calculated to most fatigue the chest; for it
compresses the vessels and nerves of the throat, and this leads to
engorgement and spasmodic action of the muscles."

We may well pause here and give another moment to the consideration of
this most important subject. The lungs, as we have seen, are the bellows
of our vocal organ; they supply the air which is the motive power on
which the voice depends. Without air no tone can be produced. Nay, more,
life itself must cease without it. Breathing goes on regularly while the
voice is silent; but in speaking and singing both inspiration and
expiration have to be regulated according to the nature of the phrases
to be spoken or sung. If the speaker does not know how to take breath
and how to control the expiration, his delivery will of necessity be
jerky and uncertain. But in the singer it is even more important that he
should be able to fill his lungs well, and, having done this, to have
absolute command over his expiration; because while the speaker can
arrange his sentences, his speed, and his breathing-places very much at
his own pleasure, the singer is bound by the music before him. It must,
therefore, be his aim to cultivate a proper method of breathing with the
object of first getting, with the least possible fatigue, the largest
possible amount of air in the most scrupulously careful manner, so as to
prevent even the smallest fraction of it from being wasted. Y