Royal Institution of Great Britain.
EXTRA EVENING MEETING,
Monday, March 13, 1882.
H.R.H. The Prince ofWales, K.G. F.R.S. Vice-Patron and
Honorary Member, in the Chair.
Eadweard Muybridge, of San Francisco.
The problem of animal mechanism has engaged the attention of mankindduring the entire period of the world's history.
Job describes the action of the horse; Homer, that of the ox; itengaged the profound attention of Aristotle, and Borelli devoted alifetime to its attempted solution. In every age, and in every country,philosophers have found it a subject of exhaustless research. Marey, theeminent French savant of our own day, dissatisfied with theinvestigations of his predecessors, and with the object of obtaining moreaccurate information than their works afforded him, employed a system offlexible tubes, connected at one end with elastic air-chambers, whichwere attached to the shoes of a horse; and at the other end with somemechanism, held in the hand of the animal's rider. The alternatecompression and expansion of the air in the chambers caused pencils torecord upon a revolving cylinder the successive or simultaneous action ofeach foot, as it correspondingly rested upon or was raised from theground. By this original and ingenious method, much interesting andvaluable information was obtained, and new light thrown upon movementsuntil then but imperfectly understood.
While the philosopher was exhausting his endeavours to expound thelaws that control, and the elements that effect the movements associatedwith animal life, the artist, with a few exceptions, seems to have beencontent with the observations of his earliest predecessors in design, andto have accepted as authentic without further inquiry, the pictorial andsculptural representations of moving animals bequeathed from the remoteages of tradition.
When the body of an animal is being carried forward with uniformmotion, the limbs in their relations to it have alternately a progressiveand a retrogressive action, their various portions accelerating incomparative speed and repose as they extend downwards to the feet, whichare subjected to successive changes from a condition of absolute rest, toa varying increased velocity in comparison with that of the body.
The action of no single limb can be availed of for artistic purposeswithout a knowledge of the synchronous action of the other limbs;[Pg 2]and to the extreme difficulty, almost impossibility, of the mind beingcapable of appreciating the simultaneous motion of the four limbs of ananimal, even in the slower movements, may be attributed the innumerableerrors into which investigators by observation have been betrayed. Whenthese synchronous movements and the successive attitudes they occasionare understood, we at once see the simplicity of animal locomotion, inall its various types and alternations. The walk of a quadruped being itsslowest progressive movement would seem to be a very simple action, easyof observation and presenting but little difficulty for analysis, yet ithas occasioned interminable controversies among the closest and mostexperienced observers.
When, during a gallop, the fore and hind legs are severally andconsecutively thrust forwards and backwards to their fullest extent,their comparative inaction may create in the mind of the carelessobserver an impression of indistinct outlines; these successiveappearances were probably combined by the earliest sculptors andpainters, a