ATHLETICS FOR CITY GIRLS. 153 



quick co-ordination of muscles, for pluck, perseverance, and self- 

 possession, far more than for mere strength, and are legitimate 

 training, therefore, for girls, so far as they are qualified to under- 

 take them. 



A more valid objection to the gymnasium is that the exer- 

 cise must be taken indoors, but this is largely overbalanced by 

 the advantages of system and purpose in the course, and is re- 

 duced to its minimum by the fact that a well-ordered gymnasium 

 is cool, clean, and well ventilated. The suggestion often proffered 

 that domestic work offers as good a field f-or exercise for girls is 

 not, in the writer's opinion, tenable. An atmosphere of dust is 

 not an ideal one for physical training, and the elements of system 

 as well as of physical recreation are lost in this scheme, for few 

 households could arrange their economy so as to combine the 

 schoolgirl's leisure with their own convenience, while the drudg- 

 ery of the employment would cause it to be abandoned whenever 

 possible. 



It is not our intention to claim that the gymnasium is the 

 permanently ideal place for every sort of physical training or 

 athletic sport for girls, but only that it does at present offer the 

 greatest good to the greatest number of our city girls in the 

 direction of their physical development and recreation. An out- 

 of-door inclosure for games and sports in pleasant weather would 

 prove a great addition to its advantages. It does not seem an 

 impossible plan for the private schools of our city to co-operate 

 in establishing such an out-of-door playground as this, with an in- 

 structor in games and sports, and hours arranged for each school 

 department. Such a ground would prove a practical and useful 

 extension of our too limited park life. 



With an apparatus sensitive enough to measure changes in temperature 

 amounting to only a millionth of a degree, Prof. S. P. Langley has located exact 

 more than two thousand lines in the infra-red spectrum, in which two thirds of 

 the snn's radiation is contained, and has succeeded in extending the spectrum to 

 six times the length of the photographic spectrum. He has tested his instrument 

 in the region of the sodium lines, and found it could not only divide these, but 

 could detect the nickel line between them. By a special device, depending on 

 the use of a cylindrical mirror, he was able to convert automatically the galvanom- 

 eter tracings into a linear spectrum. He thought the extended spectrum would 

 be of use in forecasting the weather, because it contained a rain band ; moreover, 

 the greater part of the lower spectrum seemed to be due to telluric causes. In 

 the discussion of the author's paper in the British Association, the chairman of 

 the Physical Science Section spoke of it as the most important paper that would 

 be communicated to the section. Prof. Lockyer said that the work had done for 

 the lower spectrum what Kirch liof had done for the visible rays. Lord Kelvin 

 admired the marveloiis precision of Prof. Langley's method, and the skillful way 

 in which it was carried out. 



VOL. XLVI. 12 



