I2Ö 
J. E. Wallace Wallin, 
The averages of both were very slightly longer in prose than in 
poetry. This is probably due (i) to the composition of the intervals. 
In the prose records the longer intervals (3-, 4-, and 5-syllable) were 
relatively more numerous. (2) The tendency in poetry, especially in 
routine and doggerel scansion, to rhythmize the pause ; this limits its 
length. 
Both intervals had the longest averages in verses consisting of the uni¬ 
form 2-syllable type. 
The coordination was about times more regular for the simple than 
for the complex. 
The difference was less between the regularity of the simple inter¬ 
vals in poetry and prose, than between the regularity of the complex in 
poetry and prose. 
For the reading scansion of English poetry and prose, the difference 
was twice as large for the complex as for the simple. 
In the most regular type of scansion, the regularity was slightly higher 
for the simple than the complex. The beating of time increased the 
regularity of the former most. Relatively to other types of scanning, 
however, it greatly increased the regularity of the complex intervals. 
The range of irregularity for a variety of speech of different persons 
was about times larger (1.46) for the complex than for the simple 
intervals. 
With a provisional standard of 15%, the simple intervals were rhyth¬ 
mically coordinated in about four times as many records of poetry as 
were the complex. 
General deduction.—The most perfect manifestation of centroid rhythm 
in speech never reaches the zero point of irregularity. This point is 
most nearly approached in simple-centroid intervals of uniform compo¬ 
sition, mechanically scanned. 
Bearing on the rhythmic function of the pause.—The facts reached re¬ 
garding the duration and regularity of sound and composite, and single 
and complex intervals necessitate a revision of the prevalent notion of 
the pause as compensatory,1 as the rhythmical equivalent for a missing 
syllable or a foot. Poe2 so regards the cæsura. We have seen that the 
introduction of the pause uniformly disturbs the rhythm of the centroids. 
The records without exception show this. The coordination of the 
complex intervals was almost without exception so irregular as to defy 
rhythmisation. In only two records does the inequality fall to 15 
1 Lawer, The Science of English Verse 189, New York 1880. 
Guest, A History of English Rhythms, 77, London 1882. 
2 Poe, The Rationale of Verse, Works, VI 89, Chicago 1895.