Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/72

STUDIES OF EHYTHM, I. 61 what analogous to the finer local signs discriminating motion and even its direction considerably within the ordinary limits of discriminative sensibility for stationary compass-points. (4) Counting is more than tallying by ones ; it is giving names to each position in a series of tallies. These number- iiames even below ten are of different quantity, difficulty of pronunciation, &c., and neither the effort nor time of innervation or of transition to successive names is uniform. The words one, two, three, can be brought out more easily and quickly than seven, eight, nine, even though the innervation is only just enough to enable us to keep place in the series. Generally this was not done (unless in the second series of G. S. H. in the Table) and probably cannot be done much quicker, to say the least, than the most rapid rates of antagonistic innervation even in the most skeleton pronunciations of them. If it can be, then counting ceases to be the real tallying or counting by ones. The lack of uniformity in the number-names makes the series of counts, unlike the smooth sensory series of clicks, so uneven that rhythms in the act are almost inevitable. Easier syllables are slurred over and harder ones made more prominent by means of the greater time or effort they require. Hence, in part, comes the tendency with most to count with a system of accents, on, say, the tens, fives, or perhaps twos. This too helps to make the exact matching, necessary to very rapid and correct counting, hard. The number-name is of course the last of these processes learned by the child. We have often found children of three or four years of age to bring " so many " blocks, if a number of actual things was pointed out, or even to beat "so many" times up to five, six or even eight, who did not know the number- names in order above two or three. B. Just observable Differences of Duration. Three equal intervals, each begun and ended by a click, and each interval separated from the next by a convenient term of about 1 sec., were set up on our apparatus. First the observer heard a click as a signal that the series was about to begin, then came the initial, and in, e.g., 4'27 sees, the terminal click of the first interval ; after a rest of about 1 sec. came the initial and then the terminal click of the next ; and after another second's pause those of the third interval, all three intervals being equal in the first set of observations. Then the length of the middle interval was either increased, diminished or left un- changed, and the drum again set in motion ; when it had reached its full uniform rate of rotation, the observer tried to tell in which sense, if any, the middle interval had been changed. He was allowed to hear the series but four times before judging. These conditions were of course very favourable for accurate judgment. After the series had been heard two or even three times, no impression of the relative length of the middle interval would often exist, and only after hearing the fourth and last