When in the beginning the falsetto tones are sung always _piano_ and very _staccato_, by long-continued, careful practice, with entirely the same physical treatment of both registers, a smooth and natural transition from one to the other is most easily obtained. Thus the falsetto tones gain more and more in fulness and strength, and sound far more agreeably than the forced-up chest tones of our tenorists, sung with swollen-out throats and blood-red faces. The education of men's voices involves many difficulties which do not exist in the case of the voices of women. Almost all men speak and sing in one register--tenors mostly in the second chest register, bassos mostly in the first, and oftentimes indeed not even in a correct natural manner. With this one register they sing as high and as low as they can, and this they consider the whole compass of their voices. The low chest register is rarely found good and natural (as regards the beauty of sound). In order for the production of these low chest tones, to set the vocal chords vibrating in their whole length and breadth, it is necessary that a fuller column of air from the lungs should press upon the glottis through the windpipe, which is readily of itself enlarged thereby. The easier and the more naturally this takes place, the more beautifully and naturally do these tones sound. Under the delusion that only strong singing is beautiful, and that this can be achieved only by extraordinary exertion, most of our basso singers have a peculiar way of pressing out the windpipe, which is not only very fatiguing, but gives to the low tones a rough, disagreeable sound. Among public speakers also this exhausting, faulty way of bringing out the chest tones is not uncommon, frequently rendering their voices quite incapable of use. _Merkel_ represents this way of forming the low tones as a peculiar register, which he calls the _Strohbassregister_, and through him a quite prevalent bad habit has found in other scientific works a right to existence which by no means belongs to it.