4:i Eadiveard Muyhridye [Marcli 13, 



EXTRA EVENING MEETING, 



Monday, March 13, 1882. 



H.E.H. The Peince of Wales, K.G. F.R.S. Vice-Patron and 

 Honorary Member, in tlie Chair. 



Eadweard Muybridge, of San Francisco. 



The Attitudes of Animals in Motion, illustrated with the 



Zoopraxiscope. 



The 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 jiredecessors 

 in design, and to have accepted as authentic without further inquiry, 

 the pictorial and sculptural rei)resentations 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. 



The action of no single limb can be availed of for artistic purposes 

 without a knowledge of the synchronous action of the other limbs ; 



