lOO 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



very differently, but their diagrams are strikingly alike in their main 

 feature. As a matter of interest 'counts' were made of groups of about 

 5,000 words each from various languages other than English. The 

 characteristic curves thus derived for Italian, Spanish, French, Ger- 

 man, Latin and Greek are shown in Figs. 2 and 3, and, for convenience 

 in comparison, that of Dickens's English is added. Many of these 

 'counts' were furnished by friends who became interested in the mat- 

 ter, and an incident of no little interest was the receipt of a column of 

 numbers on a strip of paper ^ith nothing to indicate its origin or 

 meaning. Suspecting, however, that it might be a 'word count,' its dia- 

 gram was constructed and it was instantly and beyond all reasonable 

 doubt identified as coming from the Latin of Caesar. 



300 



Z50 

 200 

 ISO 

 100 



so 



JOOr 



ZJO 

 ITALIAN L 



BO I TO H ^00 



ISO 

 100 

 JO 



1 ^ 3 f 5 i. 7 t 3 /O 11 I2.13M IS li> 17 / Z 3/4 S 6 7 8 9 10 // IZ 13 If /S/£/7 



IZ34S6789/0JI /Z13/flS16 17 I Z 3 4 S L 7 8 9 10 U 1113 li IS I& 11-17 



Fk;. 2. 



The original published description referred to above concludes as 

 follows : 



From the examinations thus far made I am convinced that 100,000 words 

 will be necessary and sufficient to furnish the characteristic curve of a writer — 

 that is to say, if a curve is constructed from 100,000 words of a writer, taken 

 from any one of his productions, then a second curve from another 100,000 

 words would be practically identical with the first and that this curve would, 

 in general, differ from that formed in the same way from another writer, to 

 such an extent that one could always be distinguished from another. To 

 demonstrate the existence of such a curve would require the enumeration of the 

 letters of several hundred thousand words from each of a number of writers. 

 Should its existence be established the method might then be applied to cases 



