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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



thirty-five seconds, and during this time his hand on the automat- 

 ograph moved from A to A'. At the latter point he was asked to 

 count the oscillations of a pendulum ; this entirely changed the 

 movement, the hand at once moving rapidly toward the pendulum. 

 The pendulum was a more attractive sense-impression than the 

 colors ; the special point of interest in this record is, that upon 



Fig. 11. <h-> I, Counting Metronome. Automatograph. Facing *-. Time, 35 seconds. 

 h> II, Counting Pendulum. Automatograph. Facing m->. Time, 25 seconds. 



examination the subject's color-vision proved to be defective and 

 thus explained the failure of the colors to hold his attention. 



An important problem relates to the possible correlation of 

 types of involuntary movements with age, sex, temperament, dis- 

 ease and the like. A few observations upon children are interest- 

 ing in this regard. They reveal the limited control that children 

 have over their muscles, and how difficult it is for them to fix the 

 attention when and where desired. The movements they make 

 are large, with great fluctuations, and irregularly toward the ob- 

 ject of attention. Fig. 13 illustrates some of these points; in 

 thirty-five seconds the child's hand moved by large steps seven 



Fig. 12. -> Facing #-. Hand on Automatograph. From A to A', reading colors, 35 

 seconds. From A' on, counting pendulum, 25 seconds. 



inches toward the pendulum, and the entire appearance of the out- 

 line is different from those obtained upon adults. 



Much attention has recently been paid to automatic writing, 

 or the unconscious indication of the nature, not the direction, of 

 one's thoughts while the attention is elsewhere engaged. We at- 

 tempted this upon the automatograph by asking the subject to 

 view or think of some letter or geometric figure, and then search- 



