Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Boston Public Library https://archive.org/details/attitudesofanima0Omuyb é NEP yaa Ce Aba ReeN (LS an i ; “4 5 tee “ pa :: urs | i f " e = h ( = : = a i] apt ede a . { if, “( t 1 Dy ; (i F vy . | Jd R 50°17, W/ Ropal tustitution of Great Britain. EXTRA EVENING MEETING, Monday, March 13, 1882. H.R.H. Tue Prince or Watss, K.G. F.R.S. Vice-Patron and Honorary Member, in the Chair. EAaDWEARD Muysrines, of San Francisco. The Attitudes of Animals in Motion, illustrated with the Zoopraxiscope. _ Tue problem of animal mechanism has engaged the attention of man- kind during the entire period of the world’s history. Job describes the action of the horse; Homer, that of the ox; it engaged the profound attention of Aristotle, and Borelli devoted a lifetime to its attempted solution. In every age, and in every country, philosophers have found it a subject of exhaustless research. Marey, the eminent French savant of our own day, dissatisfied with the investigations of his predecessors, and with the object of obtaining more accurate information than their works afforded him, employed a system of flexible tubes, connected at one end with elastic air-chambers, which were attached to the shoes of a horse; and at the other end with some mechanism, held in the hand of the animal’s rider. The alternate compression and expansion of the air in the chambers caused pencils to record upon a revolving cylinder the successive or simultaneous action of each foot, as it correspondingly rested upon or was raised from the ground. By this original and ingenious method, much interesting and valuable in- formation was obtained, and new light thrown upon movements until then but imperfectly understood. While the philosopher was exhausting his endeavours to expound the laws that control, and the elements that effect the movements associated with animal life, the artist, with a few exceptions, seems to have been content with the observations of his earliest predecessors in design, and to have accepted as authentic without further inquiry, the pictorial and sculptural representations of moving animals bequeathed from the remote ages of tradition. When the body of an animal is being carried forward with uniform motion, the limbs in their relations to it have alternately a progressive and a retrogressive action, their various portions acce- lerating in comparative speed and repose as they extend downwards to the feet, which are subjected to successive changes from a condition of absolute rest, to a varying increased velocity in comparison with, that of the body. \>rs The action of no single limb can be availed of for artistic purposes without a knowledge of the synchronous action of the other limbs ; B 2 Eadweard Muybridge [March 13, and to the extreme difficulty, almost impossibility, of the mind being capable of appreciating the simultaneous motion of the four limbs of an animal, even in the slower movements, may be attributed the innumerable errors into which investigators by observation have been betrayed. When these synchronous movements and the successive attitudes they occasion are understood, we at once see the simplicity of animal locomotion, in all its various types and alternations. The walk of a quadruped being its slowest progressive movement would seem to be a very simple action, easy of observation and presenting but little difficulty for analysis, yet it has occasioned interminable controversies among the closest and most experienced observers. When, during a gallop, the fore and hind legs are severally and consecutively thrust forwards and backwards to their fullest extent, their comparative inaction may create in the mind of the care- less observer an impression of indistinct outlines; these successive appearances were probably combined by the earliest sculptors and painters, and with grotesque exaggeration adopted as the solitary position to illustrate great speed. Or, as is very likely, excessive projection of limb was intended to symbolise speed, just as excess in size was an indication of rank. This opinion is to some extent cor- roborated by the productions of the Grecian artists in their best period, when their heroes are represented of the same size as other men, and their horses in attitudes more nearly resembling those possible for them to assume. The remarkable conventional attitude of the Egyptians, however, has, with few modifications, been used by artists of nearly every age to represent the action of galloping, and prevails without recognised correction in all civilised countries at the present day. The ambition and perhaps also the province of art in its most ex- alted sense, is to be a delineator of impressions, a creator of effects, rather than a recorder of facts. Whether in the illustrations of the attitudes of animals in motion the artist is justified in sacrificing - truth, for an impression so vague as to be dispelled by the first studied observation, is a question perhaps as much a subject of con- troversy now as it was in the time of Lysippus, who ridiculed other sculptors for making men as they existed in nature; boasting that he himself made them as they ought to be. A few eminent artists, notable among whom is Meissonier, have endeavoured in depicting the slower movements of animals to invoke the aid of truth instead of imagination to direct their pencil, but with little encouragement from their critics ; until recently, however, artists and critics alike have necessarily had to depend upon their observation alone to justify their conceptions or to support their theories. Photography, at first regarded as a curiosity of science, was soon recognised as a most important factor in the search for truth, and its more popular use is now entirely subordinated by its value to the astronomer, the anatomist, the pathologist, and other investigators of 1882. | | on Animals in Motion. 3 the complex problems of nature. The artist, however, still hesitates to avail himself of the resources of what may be at least acknowledged as a handmaiden of art, if not admitted to its most exalted ranks. Having devoted much attention in California to experiments in instantaneous photography, I, in 1872, at the suggestion of the editor of a San Francisco newspaper, obtained a few photographic impres- sions of a horse during a fast trot: At this time much controversy prevailed among experienced horsemen as to whether all the feet of a horse while trotting were entirely clear of the ground at the same instant of time. Ot > CO 1882. | on Animals in Motion. 13 lifting of one hind foot and the descent of the other, no matter what the length of stride. Many-able scientists have written on the theory of the gallop, but I believe Marey was the first to demonstrate, that in executing this movement, the horse left the ground with a fore foot and landed on a hind foot. The Leap. | There is little essential difference in general characteristics of either of the several movements that have been described, but with a number of experiments made with horses while leaping, no two were found to agree in the manner of execution. The leap of the same horse at the same rate of speed, with the same rider, over the same hurdle, disclosed much variation in the rise, clearance, and descent of the animal. Apart from this, the horses were not thoroughly trained leapers, and the results are perhaps not repre- sentative of those that would be obtained from the action of a well- trained hunting horse. A few motions were, however, invariable. While the horse was raising his body to clear the hurdle, one hind foot was always in advance of the other, and exercised its last energy alone. ; On the descent, the concussion was always received by one fore foot, supported by the other more or less rapidly, and sometimes as much as 30 inches in advance of where the first one struck, followed by the hind feet also, with intervals of time and distance between their several falls. It is highly probable future experiments will prove these observations to be invariable in leaping. It is highly probable that these photographic investigations, which were executed with wet collodion plates with exposures not exceeding in some instances the one five-thousandth part of a second, will dispel many popular illusions as to gait, and that future and more exhaustive experiments, with all the advantages of recent chemical discoveries, will completely unveil to the artist all the visible muscular action of men and animals during their most rapid movements. The employment of automatic apparatus for the purpose of obtain- ing a regulated succession of photographic exposures is too recent for its value to be properly understood, or to be generally used for scientific experiment; at a future time, the pathologist, the anatomist, and other explorers for hidden truths will find it indispensable for their complex investigations. LONDON: PRINTED BY WM. CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. 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