94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



should go," sufficiently heeded ? Dr. Oswald says : " Early impres- 

 sions are very enduring, and can make evil habits as well as useful 

 ones a sort of second nature. In order to forestall the chief danger of 

 an in-door life, make your children love-sick for fresh air ; make them 

 associate the idea of fusty rooms with prison-life, punishment, and sick- 

 ness." So at school, the deprivation of the regular recess ought to be 

 as severe a punishment as the criminal code of the school permits, and 

 to be sent to the school-room from the play -ground should be a suffi- 

 cient penalty for the worst offense, and is a punishment that should be 

 administered to the juvenile offender only for offenses of a nature simi- 

 lar to those which in the adult offender are punished by incarceration 

 in the jail or bridewell. 



Our physical constitution was never intended for the sluggish in- 

 activity of our sedentary and bookish school-life, and we sin against 

 the laws of our being when we forego necessary physical exercise. 

 Sloth is not one of our original sins, but an acquired one, and perhaps 

 in no other place is its acquisition so rapid as in a modern school-room, 

 where pencils arid paper are passed to the pupils, and every move- 

 ment must be quiet, subdued, and noiseless, and where the tempera- 

 ture is kept at a uniform degree, so that not even the involuntary 

 muscles get any exercise. When along with this condition come the 

 multitude of studies pursued, and the pressure of emulation, and upon 

 all the abolition of the regular play-spell, what is there to prevent the 

 boys and girls from forming the most fatal habits of muscular indo- 

 lence ? A recent writer in the " Monthly " says : " Where the chief 

 danger seems to lie, in most schools, is in the encroachment made on 

 the play-hours. In some schools the lessons set to be learned at home 

 are absurdly long and tedious. I find that in other schools, public and 

 private, a great deal of work is done during the period nominally 

 allotted to recreation only. This is a very important part of the act- 

 ual school system, and one which requires great care on the part of 

 the masters" ("Science Monthly," March, 1880). In a school of 

 eighty pupils, with ages ranging from twelve to fifteen years, each 

 pupil counted his pulsations for one minute immediately before and 

 after a fifteen minutes' recess, and recorded each result upon a card ; 

 the recess was varied, sometimes an out-door, sometimes an in-door, 

 with light gymnastics, and sometimes the pupils were advised to fol- 

 low their own inclination in the matter, but always to record upon the 

 card how the recess was passed. These are some of the general aver- 

 ages : 



1. Those pupils who go out and engage in play increase the num- 

 ber of pulsations per minute by 13'4. 2. Those who engage in in-door 

 gymnastics increase the number by 3. 3. Those who stay in the school- 

 room at their seats, or visiting their neighbors, decrease their number 

 by 3-8. This increase of number of pulsations from the recess-play is 

 by no means the full measure of the benefit derived, for that increase 



