tinue their oral resonance as high as F# before changing. It has
occurred to me so often in the course of my practice that a peculiarly
apt reason exists for making E the foundation-note of the test-scale
employed in the operating room, that I lay particular stress upon it. It
has seemed the most easeful note for the patient to sound, whatever his
vocal condition, and I have been tempted to call it the "nature tone,"
because it may be said to sing itself. At least, it can be sounded with
naturally open throat and without calling into perceptible use the
multiplied enginery of muscular forces which are required for the
formation of the higher tones of the scale.

Consider for a moment this enginery of muscular forces at the command of
the singer, and which his intelligent and ripe knowledge must guide. The
muscles used in voice-production may be divided as to action and
location into ten groups. In these ten groups there are one hundred and
seventeen individual muscles. Three of these act alone. One hundred and
fourteen act in pairs, making fifty-seven pairs. Again, these muscles
are controlled by nerves, some of which act alone and others in
combination. In one instance, a single nerve presides over two large
groups of muscles. Then, in still another instance, two separate nerves
are required to control the action of one small group--the palate group.
The distribution is as follows: Single muscles, 3; muscles in pairs,
114; groups of muscles, 10; nerves acting alone, 17; nerves acting with
others (eight groups), 88.

By taking these figures and increasing them in arithmetical progression,
it is possible to calculate what a multiplicity of nerve and muscle
effort is involved in a sneeze. Everything that appertains to the vocal
mechanism is spasmodically involved at once, and the enormous sum total
of muscle and nerve movement, individualized, is 465,120. This shows how
absurd is the theory of conscious control of the machinery of
voice-production. As I have frequently pointed out, the adjustments of
the vocal tract to the tone to be produced are responses to the will,
physical reflexes of the tones which the singer hears mentally; so that
voice is mental audition converted by responsive physical adjustment
into audible tone.

Teachers and singers are aware that wrong methods of tone-production
result in nodes on the vocal cords. The node, therefore, is one of the
most familiar forms of vocal catastrophe.

In its simp