This is continued along over the top and down the back of the scroll to the shell, which seems to be a little less elongated than the early specimens. It may be more apparent than real in most instances in consequence of the bolder edging. The hollowing of the "shell" is seemingly less delicate, but this may be taken as a natural result of the foregoing. Further on these details will come in again for review. To continue our remarks on the question of "thicknesses and their adjustment" with each other. This is a department of the luthier's art, to which perhaps much more attention has been directed by theorisers than by practical workers. The latter class have no doubt been influenced by the former to a considerable extent, oftentimes having their views expressly carried out under their personal supervision. By musical amateurs it is found to be a good theme for conversation when the excellencies of the works of various masters are dilated upon. That the richness of quality in a "Joseph" is the result of his having left "his wood" thick in certain parts and not so much in others, and that this, combined with the flat modelling, was the secret, and that it was written that some of the Josephs were too thick in the back, and therefore the freedom of the vibration was checked and the tone to some degree stifled and deficient in penetrative power. Among my early musical acquaintances, I remember an amateur violinist who would "wax eloquent" on the power of his Strad, asserting that it was owing in a great measure to its having been "left thick by the maker" all round near the border. This, no doubt, many other amateurs, acquainted with what used to be in print on the subject, will recognise as being in opposition to what had been accepted as being the rule generally observed by Stradivari, that the arching in its thickness gently decreased towards the border where it was about a third less than at the centre. This gentle gradation was said to be the cause of the beautiful "silky" and "sympathetic" quality so prominently characteristic of his instruments. The explanation of "the thing in action," as mechanicians would term it, was thus--the greatest thickness being at the part all round by the feet of the bridge, was able to sustain the vibration, or the successive shocks caused by the bow, which were transmitted through the wood of the upper table and were gradually lessened in intensity as the thickness decreased toward the border, where they subsided, or were lost.