Page:Eleanor Gamble - The Applicability of Weber's Law to Smell.pdf/54

50 In the mean variations, as a whole, it is impossible to trace any tendency to be larger in judgments made with reference to the larger standard. Though the larger standard was usually given last, the effect of exhaustion in producing erratic judgments towards the end of the hour seems to have been balanced by a certain lack of practice. At the beginning of the hour, there is a sort of conscious awkwardness, characteristic of these smell-judgments when first attempted. It is impossible to draw from our figures any conclusion in regard to the delicacy of quantitative sensible discrimination in smell, The variations were evidently controlled to a great extent by the peculiarities of the instrument and the subject’s habit of movement, and it must be confessed that from day to day the effect of practice upon them was not very clearly marked. All the subjects had smaller mean variations when using the fluid-mantle olfactometer, but this fact can hardly have been due to practice, for, although the other instrument was used first in every case, Rob., Rog. and T. returned to it after using the large instrument for a while, and showed the same mean variations as they did at the beginning, Moreover, the difficulty of turning the screw-head of the large instrument and

III.

Complete Results for One Solid and One Liquid Substance.