The imitative tones of a French boy saying, “y-e-e-e-s-o-o-y-e-e-e-s” have greeted more than one American from a distance as his nationality has been recognized, and the boy has called the words with a slow, drawling intonation. Any discussion of the cause of the quality the boy has heard as distinctive does not come under the head of “vowels and consonants” treated as individual sounds, nor under “stress,” nor even under “intonation,” “which may be defined as the variations in the pitch of the voice, i.e. variations in the pitch of the musical note produced by vibrations of the vocal cords.” Though this English acoustic quality is perfectly obvious, the underlying physiological differences of rate, direction, and continuity in the shifting of position of the vocal organs seem as yet untouched by phonetic study.