Animals in Motion An Electro-photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Progressive Movements

Abstract

MR. MUYBRIDGE'S book, “Animals in Motion,” with its numerous illustrations, offers a most interesting study, not only to the physiologist, the man of science, and to lovers of animal nature, but also to the artist and archæologist. Mr. Muybridge's attention was first directed to the movements of animals in the year 1872, while directing photographic surveys of the United States Government on the Pacific coast, by a controversy concerning animal locomotion which was being carried on in San Francisco. Mr. Muybridge tells us that according to Plato the same subject was warmly argued by the ancient Egyptians. (This statement is not verified by a reference, and it is improbable that the point is mentioned by Plato.) Mr. Muybridge determined to settle the question whether, in trotting, the horse ever had the four feet simultaneously off the ground. By an ingenious arrangement of electrically controlled cameras, Mr. Muybridge discovered and definitely proved that the trotting horse, in certain phases of his movements, has all four feet off the ground at the same time.

Animals in Motion. An Electro-photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Progressive Movements.

By E. Muybridge. Pp. 264 + 1600 half-tone Pictures. (London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1899.)