Note 234 — Chapter XX · (continued 3)

Bowditch and Hall, in Journal of Physiology, vol. iii. p. 299. Helmholtz tries to explain this phenomenon by unconscious rotations of the eyeball. But movements of the eyeball can only explain such appearances of movements as are the same over the whole field. In the windowed board one part of the field seems to move in one way, another part in another. The same is true when we turn from the spiral to look at the wall—the centre of the field alone swells out or contracts, the margin does the reverse or remains at rest. Mach and Dvorak have beautifully proved the impossibility of eye-rotations in this case (Sitzungsber. d. Wiener Akad., Bd. lxi.). See also Bowditch and Hall's paper as above, p. 300.