SCI E N CE.-SUPPLEMENT. 



FRIDAY, MARCH 11, 1887. 



THE CHARACTERISTIC CURVES OF COM- 

 POSITION. 

 Augustus DeMorgan somewhere remarks (I 

 think it is in his ' Budget of paradoxes ') that 

 some time somebody will institute a comparison 

 among writers in regard to the average length of 



mean word-length suggested itself. The new 

 method, while scai'ceiy more laborious than that 

 proposed by DeMorgan, promised to yield results 

 more quickly and of a definitely higher order. 

 It also had the advantage of including, in its ap- 

 plication, all that was necessary to the determina- 

 tion of mean word-length ; so that, in reality, it 

 furnished two distinct tests. 



Preliminary trials of the method have furnished 



Fig. 1. — First one thousand wokds in • Oliver Twist. 



words used in composition, and that it may be 

 found possible to identify the author of a book, a 

 poem, or a play, in this way. 



In reflecting upon this remark at various 

 times within the past five or six years, always 

 with the determination to test the value of the 

 suggestion whenever time for the work seemed 

 available, a more comprehensive and satisfactory 

 method of analysis than that based simply upon 



strong grounds for the belief that it may prove 

 useful as a method of analysis leading to identi- 

 fication or discrimination of authorship, and it is 

 therefore brought to the attention of the scientific 

 and literary public in the hope that someone may 

 be found who is at once able and willing to secure 

 a satisfactory test of its validity. 



The nature of the process is extremely simple, 

 but it may be useful to point out its similarity to 



