raised hands, when the person stands on tip-toe. The exercise is, to swing by grasping the cross-bar with both hands. The apparatus may be removed and fixed again with much readiness, if the upper ends of the ropes, where they are fastened together, are securely attached to a strong iron ring, which may be fixed at pleasure to an equally strong hook, firmly screwed into the beam. The hand-swing not only furnishes a useful means of exercising the arms, but calls into action to a very efficient degree all the muscles of the back; and it is therefore adapted in an especial manner to the cases of most growing girls, in whom the spinal muscles so peculiarly require to be exercised and strengthened.

Dumb-bells, of a weight proportioned to the strength, are useful means of exercising the arms; giving an incentive to the exercise, and adding to its degree. Much harm has, however, been done, and dumb-bells have fallen into very unmerited disrepute, by having been used of too great a weight for the strength of the individual. Some may justifiably make use of them, when of the weight of ten, or even twelve pounds each; whereas a weight of two or three pounds each may be quite heavy enough for those who are weak, or who are quite unaccustomed to use them. In this latter case, the weight of the dumb-bells used may be slowly and gradually increased. But the risk of using them of too great a weight, and consequently overtasking the muscles made use of, perhaps straining them to an injurious degree, and possibly inducing some

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degree of spinal irritation, with all its disturbing, and perhaps lingering and troublesome consequences,independently of the risk of producing disorder in the lungs or the heart, by the interrupted respiration which violent muscular effort is apt to involve, or by the excessive stimulus of the heart's action which it sometimes proves to be,-should be borne ever in mind, as reasons for caution in the degree to which gymnastic exercises of any kind are allowed to be carried.

Hindostanee clubs form another and very admirable mode of exercising the arms. They are made of wood. Those from which I take the measurement are twenty-five inches long, three inches and a half in diameter at one end, and about one inch and a half at the other; the broad end being loaded with lead to any required degree. The clubs measured, weigh four pounds and three quarters each. It might be well to begin with using clubs of half this weight, and possibly of somewhat less length; and the weight and length might be increased according to the ascertained or augmenting power of the user. The exercise is to stand perfectly erect, the feet close together, the shoulders thrown back, and with a club in each hand, grasped by the narrow extremity, to swing the clubs alternately over and around the back of the head, for fifty or a hundred times; this being probably repeated three or four times a day. This is an admirable means of exercise for the muscles of the upper part of the body; including, as it does, exercise of the muscles of the neck, chest,

back, shoulders, and arms. It seems to call more muscles into exercise than the use of the dumb-bells. These clubs, however, and dumb-bells, and most such means of adding to the artificial modes of exercise, are apt to do harm, and have no doubt in this way fallen into discredit, when the degree of the exercise and its duration are not adapted to the age and strength of the individual, and to the nature of the case. All violent exercises,-under which head, gymnastics of all kinds must be necessarily classed,should be strictly forbidden, when there is even a suspicion of any organic disease, and must be attended with positive risk under circumstances of undoubted structural change in any of the great organs.

The skipping-rope, discarded, with her other toys, by the young girl when entering, perhaps prematurely, on her womanhood, might be justifiably continued as a valuable article in the boudoir of her earlier adult life. It is one of the best kinds of gymnastic exercise,-calling into action almost every muscle in the body.

There are few women who do not neglect exercise. Men have, for the most part, some necessary outof-door occupation; and they almost universally walk more than women. Thousands upon thousands of Englishwomen never cross the thresholds of their houses oftener than once a week, and then it is probably to attend the public worship of their Maker; and it is seldom, that, in towns, the distance to the church or the chapel is such, as to occupy more than ten minutes in going thither. What is and must be the consequence of this? Breathing

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ever, from week to week, and from year to year, the tempered, and perhaps ill-ventilated, and by so much mephitic, air of the dwelling,—never using so much muscular exercise, either in degree or duration, as quickens the heart's action by a single throb, or aids in any apparent and material degree the action of the extreme capillaries,-deriving no assistance from this most efficient of all the expending agents in effecting the detachment and removal of the effete matters of the system,—can we wonder that plethora, or that congestion, or that a languid circulation, or that a want of tone and vigour in the capillaries, or that defective assimilation of the alimentary supplies, or that deranged function and eventual disease, should be developed; favoured as such results are, by conditions of life and habits so foreign to those organic laws, in accordance with which the organisation was originally put together? Can we wonder at the dyspepsia, or the hysteria, the susceptibility to cold, the morbid sensibility of system, the sluggish organs, the favoured disposition to phthisis or to disease of the heart, the frequent derangement of the uterine functions, the possible barrenness of the married life, the abortions which so often enfeeble and disturb the system, and pave the way to so much evil; or that the children springing from so neglected a physique, should be feeble and sickly, either to be early freed from the miseries of a weakly and delicate existence, or (with difficulty reared) carrying the mischief through unborn generations, by producing in their turn an offspring with debility for their

inheritance. And debility, proving ever an initiative or strong predisposing cause of disease, may form the great means by which the predisposition to disease is justifiably said to become hereditary.

The extent to which the predisposition to different diseases is thus heritable, might have been expected à priori, or at least in some degree expected, by the remarkable extent to which physical characters are handed down from generation to generation. Thus, we see features, expression of countenance, complexion, tone of voice, capacity of chest, breadth of shoulders, gait, and gestures, transmitted from parents to children. A well-known and remarkable case of this kind occurred in Suffolk, in the course of the last century. A boy, fourteen years old, named Edward Lambert, born in that county, was exhibited to the Royal Society, in 1731. The skin is said to have been as though studded with warts of a dark brown colour, and cylindrical figure, some of them having an elevation of one inch, growing quite close to one another, and so stiff and elastic, that when the hand was drawn over them they made a rustling noise. In the Philosophical Transactions for 1755, there is a further account of the same individual, who had then six children, all having the same extraordinary condition of the skin as Lambert himself. In 1802, a description of one of these children, then an adult, was published, with engravings, by Tilesius; and in the year 1821, an individual of the third generation, lineally descended from Lambert, was exhibited in London, whose skin, on