188 2. J on Animals in Motion. 45 



and to the extreme difficulty, almost impossibility, of the mind being 

 capable of appreciating the simultaneous motion of the four limbs of 

 an animal, even in the slower movements, may be attributed the 

 innumerable errors into which investigators by observation have been 

 betrayed. When these synchronous movements and the successive 

 attitudes they occasion are understood, we at once see the simplicity 

 of animal locomotion, in all its various types and alternations. The 

 walk of a quadruped being its slowest progressive movement would 

 seem to be a very simple action, easy of observation and presenting 

 but little difficulty for analysis, yet it has occasioned interminable 

 controversies among the closest and most experienced observers. 



When, during a gallop, the fore and hind legs are severally 

 and consecutively thrust forwards and backwards to their fullest 

 extent, their comparative inaction may create in the mind of the care- 

 less observer an impression of indistinct outlines ; these successive 

 a23pearances were probably combined by the earliest sculptors and 

 painters, and with grotesque exaggeration adopted as the solitary 

 position to illustrate great speed. Or, as is very likely, excessive 

 projection of limb was intended to symbolise sjjeed, just as excess in 

 size was an indication of rank. This opinion is to some extent cor- 

 roborated by the productions of the Grecian artists in their best 

 period, when their heroes are represented of the same size as other 

 men, and their horses in attitudes more nearly resembling those 

 possible for them to assume. The remarkable conventional attitude 

 of the Egyptians, however, has, with few modifications, been used by 

 artists of nearly every age to represent the action of galloping, and 

 23revails without recognised correction in all civilised countries at the 

 present day. 



The ambition and perhaps also the province of art in its most ex- 

 alted sense, is to be a delineator of imj)ressions, a creator of effects, 

 rather than a recorder of facts. Whether in the illustrations of the 

 attitudes of animals in motion the artist is justified in sacrificing 

 truth, for an impression so vague as to be dispelled by the first 

 studied observation, is a question perhaps as much a subject of con- 

 troversy now as it was in the time of Lysippus, who ridiculed other 

 sculptors for making men as they existed in nature ; boasting that he 

 himself made them as they ought to be. 



A few eminent artists, notable among whom is Meissonier, have 

 endeavoured in depicting the slower movements of animals to invoke 

 the aid of truth instead of imagination to direct their pencil, but 

 with little encouragement from their critics ; until recently, however, 

 artists and critics alike have necessarily had to depend upon their 

 observation alone to justify their conceptions or to support their 

 theories. 



Photography, at first regarded as a curiosity of science, was soon 

 recognised as a most important factor in the search for truth, and 

 its more popular use is now entirely subordinated by its value to the 

 astronomer, the anatomist, the pathologist, and other investigators of 



