"As there are but two ribbons or vocal strings, and as they are to the eye of equal length, it will doubtless be ask'd, how they suffice to give the multitude of sounds, grave and acute, strong and weak, of which the human voice is capable. I answer, in pursuing the comparison of this organ with musical instruments, that their lengthening and shortening are sufficient to produce these effects. "That these parts are capable of distention and contraction, is needless to be demonstrated in an assembly of Literati of your rank: but that in consequence of this distention and contraction, the Delphys can utter sounds more or less acute; in a word, all the inflexions of the voice, and modulation of singing; is a fact, which I flatter myself I shall put out of doubt. My appeal is to experiments. Yes, gentlemen, I engage to make both a Delphys and a Toy reason, speak, nay, and sing too, before ye." Thus harangued Orcotomus, promising to himself nothing less than to raise the Toys to the level of the windpipes of one of his learned brethren, whose success jealousy had attack'd in vain. CHAP. X. _Less learned and less tedious than the preceding. Continuation of the academical sitting._ By the difficulties started against Orcotomus, before he could make his experiments, it appeared, that his notions were judged to have less of solidity than ingenuity. "If Toys have the faculty of speech naturally," say they, "why have they not made use of it till now? If it was an effect of the goodness of Brama, who has been pleased to endow women with so strong a desire of talking, to double the organs of speech in them; it is very strange, that they have so long been ignorant of, or at least neglected this valuable gift of nature. Why has not the same Toy spoke more than once? Why has none of them spoke of aught but the same subject? By what mechanism does it fall out, that one of the mouths is forcibly kept shut, while the other speaks? Moreover," added they, "if we judge of the prattle of Toys by the circumstances, in which most of them have spoken, and by the things they have told; there is all the reason in the world to believe it involuntary, and that those parts would continue mute, if it had been in the power of their possessors to impose silence on them."