This apparatus answers a variety of needs in practical manipulation very satisfactorily.  Changes in adjustment are easily and quickly made, in regard to intensity, interval and absolute rate.  If desired, the gradation of intensities here employed may be refined to the threshold of perceptibility, or beyond it.

The possible variations of absolute rate and of relative intervals within the series were vastly more numerous than the practical conditions of experimentation called for.  In two directions the adaptability of the mechanism was found to be restricted.  The durations of the sounds could not be varied as were the intervals between them, and all questions concerning the results of such changes were therefore put aside; and, secondly, the hammers and anvils, though fashioned from the same stuff and turned to identical shapes and weights, could not be made to ring qualitatively alike; and these differences, though slight, were sufficiently great to become the basis of discrimination between successive sounds and of the recognition upon their recurrence of particular hammer-strokes, thereby constituting new points of unification for the series of sounds.  When the objective differences of intensity were marked, these minor qualitative variations were unregarded; but when the stresses introduced were weak, as in a series composed of 3/8-, 2/8-, 2/8-inch hammer-falls, they became sufficiently great to confuse or transform the apparent grouping of the rhythmical series; for a qualitative difference between two sounds, though imperceptible when comparison is made after a single occurrence of each, may readily become the subconscious basis for a unification of the pair into a rhythmical group when several repetitions of them take place.

In such an investigation as this the qualification of the subject-observer should be an important consideration.  The susceptibility to pleasurable and painful affection by rhythmical and arrhythmical relations among successive sensory stimuli varies within wide limits from individual to individual.  It is of equal importance to know how far consonance exists between the experiences of a variety of individuals.  If the objective conditions of the rhythm experience differ significantly from person to person it is useless to seek for rhythm forms, or to speak of the laws of rhythmical sequence.  Consensus of opinion among a variety of participators is the only foundation upon which one can base the determination of objective forms of any practical value.  It is as necessary to have many subjects as to have good ones.  In the investigation here reported on, work extended over the two academic years of 1898-1900.  Fourteen persons in all took part, whose ages ranged from twenty-three to thirty-nine years.  Of these, five were musically trained, four of whom were also possessed of good rhythmic perception; of the remaining nine, seven were good or fair subjects, two rather poor.  All of these had had previous training in experimental science and nine were experienced subjects in psychological work.