Animals in Motion. By Eadweard Muybridge. (Chapman and Hall. 20s.)—This
book contains reduced reproductions of a number of the electro-photographs which were gathered together in the author's great work in eleven folio volumes. The present selection brings within range of the student of animal motions a vast amount of most curious information. The first thing which strikes us is the extreme unreality of these photographs taken of the same movement at short intervals. The explanation is that the camera and the eye see differently. The first records isolated fragments of movements ; the brain receives from the eye a con- tinuous series of movements passing one into another. It is for this reason that painters, to be true to the beauty of movement, are often obliged to be untrue to the mere facts. A man walking may present to the eye an image of great beauty, but the same man electro-photographed at intervals of a thousandth part of a second may appear quite ugly,—the beautiful effect being produced by the passing of one movement into another. But the artist can only represent the figure in one attitude at a time, therefore he must sacrifice some of the truth of position to the truth of the impression of beauty. Some of the photographs in this book do give the impression of beauty ; for instance, the series of the white horse and its classic rider.
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