ANTHROPOMETRIC LABORATORIES 247 



sets are published in the Anthropometric hist. Journal 

 1884 [81], and afford good material for future use in 

 many ways. 



Among other instruments that I contrived then 

 or subsequently, were small whistles with a screw 

 plug, for determining the highest audible note, the 

 limit of which varies much in different persons and at 

 different ages. A parcel of schoolboys might inter- 

 change very shrill and loud whistles quite inaudibly 

 to an elderly master. I found them to produce 

 marked effects on cats, and made many experiments 

 at a house where I often stayed, in which my bed- 

 room window overlooked a garden much frequented 

 by them. My plan was to watch near the open 

 window, and when a cat appeared and had become 

 quite unsuspicious and absorbed, to sound one of 

 these notes inaudible to most elderly persons. The 

 cat was round in a minute. I noticed the quickness 

 and precision with which these animals direct their 

 eyes to the source of sound. It is not so with dogs. 



I contrived a hollow cane made like a walking 

 stick, having a removable whistle at its lower end, 

 with an exposed indiarubber tube under its curved 

 handle. Whenever I squeezed the tube against the 

 handle, air was pushed through the whistle. I tried 

 it at nearly all the cages in the Zoological Gardens, 

 but with little result of interest, except that it certainly 

 annoyed some of the lions. I have often met with 

 persons who perceived no purely audible sound when 

 very high notes were sounded, but who experienced 

 a peculiar feeling of discomfort which I have occasion- 

 ally felt myself. This, I think, was the case with some 

 of the lions, who turned away and angrily rubbed 



