It may reasonably be objected that there should be here no bands at all, since the same considerations would give an increasingly red band from B’ to A’, whereas by hypothesis the disc rotates so fast as to give an entirely uniform color.  It is true that when the characteristic effect is A’ A entire, the fusion-color is so well established as to assimilate a fresh stimulus of either of the component colors, without itself being modified.  But on the area from 1 to 16 the case is different, for here the fusion-color is less well established, a part of the essential colored units having been replaced by black, the color of the rod; and black is no stimulation.  So that the same increment of component color, before ineffective, is now able to modify the enfeebled fusion-color.

Observation confirms this interpretation, in that band y-1 is not red, but merely the fusion-color slightly darkened by an increment of black.  Furthermore, if the rod is broad and slow in motion, but white instead of black, no bands can be seen overlying the rod.  For here the small successive increments which would otherwise produce the bands 1-2, 2-3, etc., have no effect on the remainder of the fusion-color plus the relatively intense increment of white.

It may be said here that the bands 1-2, 2-3, etc., are less intense than the bands x-9, 9-10, etc., because there the recent or weighted unit-effects are black, while here they are the respective colors.  Also the bands grow dimmer from x-9 to 15-16, that is, as they become older, for the small increment of one color which would give band 15-16 is almost wholly overridden by the larger and fresher mass of stimulation which makes for mere fusion.  This last is true of the bands always, whatever the rate or width of the rod.

10.  In general, equal sectors give equal bands, but if one sector is considerably more intense than the other, the bands of the brighter color will, for a broad and swiftly-moving rod, be the broader.  The brighter sector, though equal in width to the other, contributes more toward determining the fusion-color; and this fact is represented by an intrusion of the stronger color into the transition-bands, at the expense of the weaker.  For in these, even the decreased amount of the stronger color, on the side next a strong-color band, is yet more potent than the increased amount of the feebler color.  In order to observe this fact one must have the rod broad, so as to give a broad transition-band on which the encroachment of the stronger color may be evident.  The process is the same with a narrow rod and narrow transition-bands, but, being more limited in extent, it is less easily observed.  The rod must also move rapidly, for otherwise the bands overlap and become obscure, as will be seen in the next paragraph.