24 galton.org
24
Inquiries into Human Faculty
fatigue. My apparatus, which is explained more fully in the Appendix,
consists of a number of common gun cartridge cases filled with alternate
layers of shot, wool, and wadding, and then closed in the usual way. They
are all identical in appearance, and may be said to differ only in their
specific gravities. They are marked in numerical sequence with the
register numbers, 1, 2, 3, etc., but their weights are proportioned to the
numbers of which 1, 2, 3, etc., are the logarithms, and consequently run in
a geometric series. Hence the numbers of the weights form a scale of
equal degrees of sensitivity. If a person can just distinguish between the
weights numbered 1 and 3, he can also just distinguish between 2 and 4, 3
and 5, and any other pair of weights of which the register number of the
one exceeds that of the other by 2. Again, his coarseness of discrimination
is exactly double of that of another person who can just distinguish pairs
of weights differing only by 1, such as 1 and 2, 2 and 3, 3 and 4, and so
on. The testing is performed by handing pairs of weights to the operatee
until his power of discrimination is approximately made out, and then to
proceed more carefully. It is best now, for reasons stated in the Appendix,
to hand to the operatee sequences of three weights at a time, after
shuffling them. These he has to arrange in their proper order, with his eyes
shut, and by the sense of their weight alone. The operator finally records
the scale interval that the operatee can just appreciate, as being the true
measure of the coarseness (or the inverse measure of the delicacy) of the
sensitivity of the operatee.
It is somewhat tedious to test many persons in succession, but any one
can test his own powers at odd and end times with ease and nicety, if he
happens to have ready access to suitable apparatus.
The use of tests, which, objectively speaking, run in a geometric series,
and subjectively in an arithmetic one, may be applied to touch, by the use
of wire-work of various degrees of fineness; to taste, by stock bottles of
solutions of salt, etc., of various strengths; to smell, by bottles of attar of
rose, etc., in various degrees of dilution.
The tests show the sensitivity at the time they are made, and give an
approximate measure of the discrimination with
