14.6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



addition twice or thrice weekly, and ends her day with her books 

 or in society, depending upon her environment. 



These engagements leave her about one hour's time for out- 

 door life and exercise, and this consists for the most part in a 

 walk on the avenue, or a shopping expedition which often ends in 

 a crowded, ill- ventilated store. Riding and driving are recrea- 

 tions, as a rule, only indulged in by the favored few. Her sum- 

 mer may be a season for physical freedom, but is often one of 

 social dissipation spent in the atmosphere of a fashionable resort. 



The product of these various influences is intellectually more 

 or less successful ; certainly the American girl, clever, versatile, 

 accomplished, is an interesting type of our civilization. If we 

 analyze her physically we shall find that she possesses the first 

 qualification of a fine physique viz., height. Bowditch's meas- 

 urements of ten thousand public-school children in and about 

 Boston show that in stature they surpass their English neighbors, 

 who are popularly supposed to be superior in that respect. The 

 writer has measured between eight and nine hundred New York 

 city girls and women, and has found the average stature with 

 them equal to Bowditch's measurements, sometimes surpassing 

 them, many exhibiting unusual height. In breadth of shoulders, 

 waist, and hips the measurements show them to be fairly well 

 developed, although the American type appears to be less gener- 

 ous in this respect than the English or the German. Happily, 

 the tendency of the day to out-of-door sports has thrown the 

 slim-waisted girl into the shadow of unfashionableness, so that 

 this species of deformity does not necessarily constitute part of 

 the type. In these and certain other respects Nature has evi- 

 dently intended by her original drawing to give the girls what 

 we may call a fair chance. 



But the average city girl of our experience has two or three 

 marked physical deficiencies that are worth considering. The 

 first of these is a shallow chest, the second is a lack of symmetry 

 in the body, and the third is a deficiency in muscular develop- 

 ment. The relation of the depth of the chest to the development 

 of the vital organs is a highly important one. The " deep-chested 

 Juno" is given us as a type of noble physical development, and 

 we rightly associate such a conformation with what is known as 

 the staying power. A deep chest offers a generous cage for a 

 robust heart and expanded lungs, and is almost invariably found 

 in athletes, who must have endurance, as well as in singers, whose 

 efforts likewise must be long sustained. It has been found that 

 persons most susceptible to the infection of phthisis commonly 

 have a conformation which has been called ih.Q 'phthisical habitus 

 viz., a long, rather narrow, and especially a shallow chest, flat- 

 tened from before backward. Whether Americans exhibit this 



