I do not know what explanation was given, if any, of the "system" of thickness adopted much by some of the Milanese school, which was that of hewing away the wood until it was thinnest at the part all round by the feet of the bridge and thickest by the lower wings of the sound holes. Judging by the before mentioned assertions as to the association of power of energetic vibration with the thickest wood under the bridge, these Milanese makers were acting very wrongly, but, strange to say, many instruments of very great power were made by them under these conditions. Many years ago I was conversing on the subject of thicknesses with an English maker of experience and who seemed to believe in certain "thicknesses," and having then as yet made no practical experiments myself in the matter, I put the following to him. There are many violins to be met with that through ill-usage and pressure on the bridge have depressions instead of the level wood at the part we should expect it to be, and yet the tone is considered fine, how is this? The answer was remarkable, and not unworthy of the class of makers to which he belonged--that although the wood had become thinner from pressure, "the original amount was all there," it was only squeezed closer together. The instruments were, no doubt, "rightly gauged" in the first instance. "Now there," he said, pointing to a 'cello hanging up almost out of reach and looking in rather a woe-begone condition, is a bass that "never would go well because it was badly gauged when first made." Age and usage were to be of no avail in bringing this wretched piece of workmanship up to the standard of the average. This last assertion might have been of considerable weight had the maker been a personal pupil of Stradivari, but the public verdict has been that there was a great gulf between the two, and that the first had not been initiated into the secret of the others. Foreign as well as English makers have announced in the most impressive manner at their command that their instruments were identical in all respects, including the system of thicknesses in the originals, buy them, use them, and be convinced that in time they would be just as good as the real thing.