Page:Eleanor Gamble - The Applicability of Weber's Law to Smell.pdf/8

4 Volkmann, by their "shadow-experiments," and Masson with his rotating disks, had shown, its validity for brightness. Fechner had also established Weber's conclusions in regard to strain by the method of right and wrong cases. In the last twenty years, Tischer, Merkel, and Starke, by the method of minimal changes ; Merkel and Angell by the method of mean gradations ; and Lorenz, Merkel, and Kämpfe, by the method of right and wrong cases, have confirmed for noise intensities the results of Volkmann ; Helmholtz, Aubert, and Kräpelin have established for brightness the results of Masson ; and Merkel, using the method of minimal changes, has also proved the conclusions of Weber and Fechner in regard to strain. In the last six or seven years, the experiments of Merkel by the method of average error have proved the extension of the law to those strain-sensations in terms of which we measure distance by the eye, and the experiments of Schumann by the same method give some indication of its extension to strain-sensations involved in our estimate of intervals between one-half second and three seconds.

In case of the sensation-modalities for which the law has not been proved, and in the case of tone, there are great difficulties in graduating the intensity of the stimulus. Articular sensations, indeed, are not themselves graduated intensively. In the case of tone, the difficulty is mechanical,—that of graduating minutely the objective intensity of simple periodic vibrations. In the case of the two temperature qualities, which are peculiar in depending on different intensities of a stimulus from a physical point of view the same in kind, and in passing into each other through a conscious indifference-point, the extreme adaptability of the so far unknown and inaccessible peripheral organ makes the intensity of the physiological stimulus begin to fall towards the indifference-point upon the application of any new physical stimulus, and thus prevents the phys ical stimulus from being a measure of the physiological. The sensation, moreover, varies in intensity with the extent of surface stimulated and with the weight of the stimulating body. The qualities of taste and smell form manifolds of indefinitely related terms, which must be investigated separately. The intensity of the case of taste, the list is at least closed. In the taste sensation, however, is a function (1) of the degree of saturation of the solution tasted ; (2) of the magnitude of the area excited ; and (3) of the movement, diffusion, and pressure of the substance tasted within the buccal cavity. No very satisfactory way of keeping all but one of these factors constant, while that one is varied, has as yet been found, though the investigations of Camerer, who worked by the method of right and wrong cases, make the law of Weber appear to apply to salt and bitter.

As for the applicability of Weber's law to smell, the object of this paper is to offer a mass of experimental difference-determinations, with a statement of the "checks" or controls to which they must be subjected. This enumeration of possible