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fingers of a young lady at the piano. What facility of movement 
practice gives her. She has, however, to play her piece over and 
over again, to get the fingers to play it with effect; and she 
knows how soon her fingers will get stiff and unready if practice 
is not kept up. Look at clowns and harlequins on the stage,—or 
tumblers performing at a street show,—whas forced and unnatural 
attitudes they put themselves into ;—what twistings and twirlings 
of the body they go through with perfect ease, having been trained 
to them perhaps from their very childhood. If any of ourselves 
were to attempt such antics, it might be death to us. Look; 
again, at the arms of a blacksmith working with his hammer on 
the forge all day long; and then, in contrast, look at the lean 
shanks, scarcely more than skin and bone, of an old student, a 
recluse, who has rarely left his chair to take exercise out of 
doors ;—see the power and large development of muscle in the 
one case, its wasted and shrivelled appearance in the other. And 
I might here draw a moral from such facts—as a lesson to 
ourselves, though perhaps a little foreign to our immediate 
subject. I might notice how imperatively nature insists on every 
organ in the human body being duly exercised in order to be 
kept in health. Use your arms and legs—your hands—your voice 
—your eyes;—exercise your brain, in like manner, and its 
thinking faculties (one of our bodily organs which, I fear, is less 
thought of than it deserves) ; if you would not have any of these 
organs degenerate and waste away. Exercise them all in turn, 
and until they begin to show signs of fatigue ;—then stop. 
And this warns me that it is time for myself to stop. Were I to 
tell you of all the “curiosities,” to use Frank Buckland’s word, 
that are to be met with in the study of animals and their ways, 
I should keep you here all night. Let the mere sample that I 
have selected for this occasion suffice ; and may it have the effect 
of attracting more of the members of our Club to Natural History 
rsuits. 
Do not imagine, gentlemen,—in reference once more to the case 
