ABSTRACT
It is now nine years since the photographs of Eadweard Muybridge, taken in California, surprised the world by challenging all received conceptions of animal motion. The use of instantaneous photography in reading the secret of motion was as much the introduction of a new instrument of precision to supply the lack of sense as the use of the microscope, and had the same limitations in its application. Minute photographs were taken by the cameras in action, and were enlarged from the small representations of beast or bird to the illustrations, which picture but portions of the original plates. The rounded photographs of the play and action of muscle suggest that the history of animal movement is the development of the rear limbs for use as a spring and source of energy and of the fore limbs as a basis of support.
