244 



SCIEJ^CE. 



[Vol. IX., No. 214 



Before makinp^ an analysis of Mr. Atkinson's 

 composition, and after having counted more than 

 thirty thousand from other writers, I had con- 

 cluded that a group of one thousand words whose 

 average length was less than four letters would 

 not occur, except in compositions especially writ- 

 ten in short words. Out of ten such groups from 

 Mr. Atkinson's addresses, however, one was found 

 whose mean word-length was 3.991. I have re- 

 cently received from him a brief paper, entitled 



method of analysis and identification has been 

 furnished by several friends who have had the 

 patience to enumerate the letters in many thou- 

 sand words from different sources. Prof. Stanley 

 Coulter sends me the result of a count of ten 

 thousand from Dickens's ' Christmas carol.' He 

 writes. "I became exceedingly interested in watch- 

 ing how little tricks of composition affected the 

 'curve.' For instance, one of the characters, 

 'Scrooge,' appears in one place very often, and an 



4 



10 11 U 13 14 15 16 



Fig. 8. —Curve op five thousaj^d words from Mill's 'Political economy.' 



' How do we all get a living?' which was pub- 

 lished in Worh and wages, and in the preparation 

 of which he made a special effort to use the sim- 

 plest language possible. The article contains a 

 little more than two thousand words, the number 

 being too small for the construction of a curve 

 which would be comparable with those already 

 exhibited. The general form of one based upon 

 two thousand words is similar to that previously 

 obtained from the same writer, and the mean 

 word-length is 8.771. 



Interesting evidence of the validity of this 



excess of 7's is the result ; in another place 'Fiz- 

 ziwig,' and the 8's creep up [this is doubtless owing 

 to the frequent appearance of the names]. Other 

 variations and excesses seem to come from Dick- 

 ens's love of certain forms of description, which 

 he iterates and reiterates upon a single page." 



I have plotted these ten thousand words from 

 the ' Carol ' with the ten thousand already shown 

 from 'Oliver Twist,' in fig. 12. A very close re- 

 semblance will be observed, and it will be noticed 

 that the mean of these two curves would be free 

 from certain ii-regularities which occur in both. 



