succession increases.  It is impossible from this curve to say, however, that the subjective rhythmization of uniform material becomes more pronounced in proportion as the intervals between the successive stimulations increase.  Below a certain rapidity the series of sounds fails wholly to provoke the rhythmizing tendency; and it is conceivable that a change in the direction of the curve may occur at a point beyond the limits included within these data.

The introduction from time to time of a single extra tap, with the effect of transposing the relations of the motor accompaniment to the phases of the metronome, has been here interpreted as arising from a periodically recurring adjustment of the reaction process to the auditory series which it accompanies, and from which it has gradually diverged.  The departure is in the form of a slow retardation, the return is a swift acceleration.  The retardation does not always continue until a point is reached at which a beat is dropped from, or an extra one introduced into, the series.  In the course of a set of reactions which presents no interpolation of extra-serial beats periodic retardation and acceleration of the tapping take place.  This tertiary rhythm, superimposed on the differentiation of simple phases, has, as regards the forms involved in the present experiments, a period of ten single beats or five measures.

From the fact that this rhythm recurs again and again without the introduction of an extra-serial beat it is possible to infer the relation of its alternate phases to the actual rate of the metronome.  Since the most rapid succession included was two beats per second, it is hardly conceivable that the reactor lost count of the beats in the course of his tapping.  If, therefore, the motor series in general parallels the auditory, the retardations below the actual metronome rate must be compensated by periods of acceleration above it.  Regarded in this light it becomes questionable if what has been called the process of readjustment really represents an effort to restore an equilibrium between motor and auditory processes after an involuntary divergence.  I believe the contrasting phases are fundamental, and that the changes represent a free, rhythmical accompaniment of the objective periods, which themselves involve no such recurrent differentiation.

Of the existence of higher rhythmic forms evidence will be afforded by a comparison of the total durations of the first and second five-groups included in the decimal series.  Difference of some kind is of course to be looked for; equivalence between the groups would only be accidental, and inequality, apart from amount and constancy, is insignificant.  In the results here presented the differentiation is, in the first place, of considerable value, the average duration of the first of these groups bearing to the second the relation of 1.000:1.028.

Secondly, this differentiation in the time-values of the respective groups is constant for all the subjects participating.  The ratios in their several cases are annexed: