470 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



occasionally, but every day, that we ought to take our portion of 

 exercise. Even putting aside the question of time, it is not hard 

 to show that play-hours do not constitute a complete physical 

 education. 



There is exercise in play-hours, but there is not, properly 

 speaking, training of the movements ; there is no improvement of 

 these movements in view of a useful effect. Each one does not 

 get the portion of exercise to which he has a right. According to 

 the general law, the strongest or most hardy are more benefited 

 than the weaker ones, and the mean level does not rise. Games 

 and sports are still what they have always been an elegant 

 means, an agreeable form of exercise, the privilege of the easy 

 class, the pleasure of the smallest number. They can not be 

 extended into the working class which is most interested in them, 

 because it is, unfortunately, often obliged to live in bad hygienic 

 conditions. 



Even while it is possible, by means of more perfect facilities 

 for communication, to give the children in our schools more fre- 

 quent excursions in the open air, such excursions will always be 

 rare once or twice a week at the most, in the large cities. We 

 shall be obliged on other days to have recourse to the processes 

 of a good gymnastics, mere artificial processes, but which have the 

 advantage of being applicable everywhere, and of producing, in 

 the hands of experienced masters, successful results an arti- 

 ficial remedy in an artificial medium, if we will call it so, and if 

 we can define precisely the boundary between the natural and the 

 artificial. 



Let us, nevertheless, use all our efforts to multiply the public 

 places and shelters for the sole purpose of furnishing children 

 and individuals of every class and every age with places designed 

 for exercise in the open air. 



The essential factor of physical education is voluntary motion. 

 From the hygienic point of view it is important to have a suffi- 

 cient amount of exercise to stimulate the combustion in the in- 

 terior of the organism, and to facilitate the elimination of the 

 wastes of incomplete combustion, which develop into real poi- 

 sons. From the point of view of harmonious development, not 

 the amount alone of exercise is to be considered, but the form or 

 nature of the movement also ; not the quantity, but the quality, 

 too, of the movement is of importance. 



Nothing is more malleable than bone and muscle. Trainers, 

 under the influence of movements frequently repeated, transform, 

 domestic species by the action of three great modifiers selection, 

 alimentation, and exercise ; every subject devoted to a well-char- 

 acterized special calling bears the marks of its calling in its 

 structure. "We know, in a general way, that under the infiu- 



