Researches on the rhythm of speech. 
3 
etc., were spoken into a voice key. The beats of the finger preceded 
the sounds. A similar result has beeen obtained in the present series of 
experiments. The subject was required to beat time on the table upon 
which the phonograph rested in time with the rhythm of the accents of 
several verses of faultless meter, which were mechanically scanned. The 
finger beats were transmitted to the phonograph cylinder through the 
frame of the phonograph. The results showed discrepancies between the 
two beats, the beat of the finger generally being anterior to the metrical 
accents. In the second place, the experiments, to which reference was 
last made, indicate that the movements of the finger serve as regulators 
of the movements of the larynx. The subject was directed to scan as 
regularly as possible both with and without the beats of the finger. The 
result, as may be seen by turning to the E. H. T. records (Tables LXII. 
and LXXV. below), was that the regularity in the former instance was 
more than trebled. This explains the high degree of regularity obtained 
in the measurements of the two preceding series of researches. 
Krâl and Mares1 made use of a more direct method of measuring 
vocal sounds. The apparatus employed was a telephone receiver, in 
electrical contact with the nerve of a rhuscle of a frog’s leg, the con¬ 
tractions of which were registered upon the smoked paper of a kymograph 
by means of a recording arm. The sounds spoken into the receiver pro¬ 
duced electrical vibrations that stimulated the nerve and caused the muscle 
to contract. 
The experiments included two kinds of measurements: (i) the 
length of syllables, long and short, uttered separately ; and (2) the 
measures of scanned verse. The language spoken was Bohemian. 
Four general results were obtained in this investigation : (1) long 
vowels and diphthongs, though generally longer than short vowels, were 
often of the same length; (2) neither of these had absolute time- 
values, even for the same person ; (3) consonants required a very short 
time for their utterance, the addition of consonants to syllables not be¬ 
ing attended by a proportionate increase in the duration of the sylla¬ 
bles, and some additions of consonants tending to shorten rather than 
lengthen the syllables ; (4) even in attempting to scan verse so as to- 
exactly coordinate the time of the measures, an equality of time-val¬ 
ues was not obtainable, whether the scansion was according to the time 
theory or the emphasis theory of meter. 
While syllables should be measured, not as independent entities but as 
interrelated elements of a complex group of syllables—-the conditions 
1 Kràl a Mares, Trvàni hlâsek a slabik die objectivné miry, Listy Filologické, 1893 
XX 257.