form, was, we think, her great
error.

Behnke admitted that all five registers might be heard, especially in
contraltos, but he did not attach equal importance to each of these
registers.

Mackenzie the author conceives to have been misled by the very method
that he considered a special virtue in his investigations--the
examination of trained singers. Surely, if one would learn what is
Nature's teaching on this subject, he must not draw conclusions from
trained vocalists alone! By training one may learn to walk well on his
hands, but this does not prove such a method the natural one, nor
would it be good reasoning to draw this conclusion, even if a few
individuals were found who could thus walk more rapidly than in the
usual way.

The diversity that Mackenzie found in singers does not, in the
author's opinion, exist in nature; much if not most of it was due to
training, and all that can be said is that several people may sing in
different ways with not greatly different aesthetic results; but such
methods of investigation may, as in this case, lead to conclusions
that are dangerously liberal.

The author holds to-day, as he did when he published his results many
years ago, that "Impressions from general laryngoscopic observations
or conclusions drawn from single cases will not settle these
questions. Very likely differences such as these writers allude to may
exist to a slight degree; but if they do, I question whether they are
sufficiently open to observation ever to be capable of definition; nor
is it likely that they interfere with methods of voice-production
which are alike operative in all persons."

Holding these views, not only can the author not agree with those who
believe that the change in a register occurs in different persons of
the same voice (_e.g._, soprano) at appreciably different levels in
the scale, and even varies naturally from day to day, but he holds
that to believe this in theory and embody it in practice is to pursue
a course not only detrimental to the best artistic results, but
contrary to the plain teachings of physiology in general and that of
the vocal organs in particular.

The change in a register should be placed _low_ enough in the scale to
suit all of the same sex. _It is safe to carry a higher register down,
but it is always risky, and may be injurious to the throat, to carry a
lower up beyond a certain point._ The latter leads not only to a
limitation of resources in tone