120 THE SUMMERING OF HUNTERS. 



the services of those who would apply just the 

 proper amount of exercise, far short of course of the 

 violent intermittent exercise of the hunting season — 

 then, no doubt every other means would be most 

 advantageously superseded. It must not be sup- 

 posed that it is to the advantage of the '^ master" 

 tissues to be thrown completely out of work. To 

 take an extreme case : let a prizefighter, in training, 

 put his healthy arm in a sling, and thus keep it 

 motionless for six weeks, and then compare it with 

 its fellow. See its diminished size, feel the flabby 

 softened biceps. Muscles, so far from being 

 benefited by being completely rested, are actually 

 the worse for it. The individual fibrils, which in 

 the multitude go to make up the muscles, not only 

 shrink, but have a tendency to become degenerated 

 into fat, and get removed by absorption into the 

 blood-stream. The mean between these two ex- 

 tremes (hunting condition and idle rest) is, as one 

 would know beforehand without much consideration, 

 the best. During the season, the hunter's muscles 

 have been in the habit of storing up vast quantities 

 of energy, called by physiologists "muscular energy." 

 The higher the condition of the muscle the more of this 

 energy will it store up. The first expenditure of this 

 stored up muscular energy, we may remark in pass- 

 ing, is intensely pleasurable, so that on first putting 

 the muscles in motion — liberating the energy —in 

 coming out of the stable, friskiness, which goes by 

 the name of freshness, is displayed, uncontrollable 



