[Footnote 105: Perhaps the discussion concerning the peculiarity of cats always falling on their feet, which occupied the Parisian Academy, and, incidentally, Parisian society a few years ago, will be remembered here. I believe that the questions which arose are disposed of by the considerations advanced in my _Bewegungsempfindungen_ (1875). I also partly gave, as early as 1866, the apparatus conceived by the Parisian scientists to illustrate the phenomena in question. One difficulty was left untouched in the Parisian debate. The otolith apparatus of the cat can render it no service in _free_ descent. The cat, however, while at rest, doubtless knows its position in space and is instinctively conscious of the amount of movement which will put it on its feet.] [Footnote 106: See the Appendix to the English edition of my _Analysis of the Sensations_, Chicago, 1897.] [Footnote 107: Compare my _Analysis of Sensations_, p. 123 ff.] [Footnote 108: E. H. Weber, _De aure et auditu hominis et animalium_, Lipsiae, 1820.] [Footnote 109: Störensen, _Journ. Anat. Phys._, London, Vol. 29 (1895).] ON SOME PHENOMENA ATTENDING THE FLIGHT OF PROJECTILES.[110] "I have led my ragamuffins where they were peppered."--_Falstaff._ "He goes but to see a noise that he heard."--_Midsummer Night's Dream._ To shoot, in the shortest time possible, as many holes as possible in one another's bodies, and not always for exactly pardonable objects and ideals, seems to have risen to the dignity of a duty with modern men, who, by a singular inconsistency, and in subservience to a diametrically contrary ideal, are bound by the equally holy obligation of making these holes as small as possible, and, when made, of stopping them up and of healing them as speedily as possible. Since, then, shooting and all that appertains thereto, is a very important, if not the most important, affair of modern life, you will doubtless not be averse to giving your attention for an hour to some experiments which have been undertaken, not for advancing the ends of war, but for promoting the ends of science, and which throw some light on the phenomena attending the flight of projectiles. Modern science strives to construct its picture of the world not from speculations but so far as possible from facts. It verifies its constructs by recourse to observation. Every newly observed fact completes its world-picture, and every divergence of a construct from observation points to some imperfection, to some lacuna in it. What is seen is put to the test of, and supplemented by, what is thought, which is again naught but the result of things previously seen. It is always peculiarly fascinating, therefore, to subject to direct verification by observation, that is, to render palpable to the senses, something which we have only theoretically excogitated or theoretically surmised.