April 2, 1888.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



127 



certain degree of recklessness, and jjossibly some disasters 

 may have arisen from foolhardy fellows uncovering their 

 lamps to light their pipes; but every collier can gauge the 

 amount of explosive gases surrounding him by the state of 

 his lamp tlame, and there is such a thing as public opinion 

 underground. Any man known to be guilty of risking the 

 lives of all his fellow-workers for the sake of a smoke would 

 not escape unpunished by those upon whom the outrage had 

 been committed, especially by the women above ground 

 with vested interests in husbands below. 



Considerable progress has recently been made in the 

 electric lighting of mines. Portable batteries and accu- 

 mulators are used as sources of power. Their weight, as at 

 present constructed, is a great objection. This will probably 

 be diminished with further progress. But even this will 

 demand protection, as the breaking of the glass bulb of an 

 incandescent lamp would expose a filament of burning 

 carbon nearly as dangerous as a flame. Perhaps their worst 

 defect is the absence of the warning which is given by the 

 behaviour of the common lamp flame. 



LIFTING GREAT WEIGHTS. 



IFTING exercises are open to the objection 

 that they tend only to increase the strength 

 of the body, activity not being increased by 

 any of them. A man who follows lifting 

 work only will be a slow mover, and what 

 Blaikie calls "muscle-bound," meaning that 

 the muscles themselves, by their undue or 

 disproportionate development, limit the 

 play of limb. Without agreeing with him that the full 

 degree of lissomeness which can be attained by exercises 

 of a contrary tendency is desirable, we must admit that a 

 muscle-bound condition is disadvantageous. Yet lifting 

 exercise, pursued with due consideration of the necessity 

 for an adequ.ate amount of correcting exercise, is exceedingly 

 useful, because in our daily life we constantly find occasion 

 for the use of the lifting powers of the body. 



Lifting from the shoulder ought to be but a portion of 

 the lift from the ground to the full height of the upstretched 

 arm or arms. To lift a pair of weights from the ground, 

 slowly raising them to and past the level of the shoulders, 

 and thence to thrust them upwards, still slowly, till the 

 arms straighten, is a much severer exercise than to raise the 

 same weights from the shoulder only. And this last, again, 

 is more trying than to send up the same pair of weights 

 with sufficient velocity to carry them past the dead part of 

 the lift, which ranges from the height of the mid-chest to a 

 few inch&s above the shoulder. I, who can make no claim 

 to exceptional strength, can readily (or could a year or two 

 since, and suppose I still can) lift any one not exceeding 

 140 or 1.50 lbs. in weight to the full upward reach of my 

 arms if I start right ; but I could not lift two-thirds of that 

 weight slowly from the ground to above my head, or even 

 slowly from the height of my waist. The way to lift any 

 one easily in that manner is to place one hand upon the 

 waist, passing the other under the knees so that the liody 

 of the carried sinks somewhat, a motion resisted by the 

 elasticity of the arms and legs of the carrier and converted 

 into an upward motion from a height favourable to lifting — 

 such rapidity of rise being communicated that the body is 

 carried over the dead part of the lift, after which the arms 

 readily straighten and carry the weight to the full height. 

 The exercise is not to be recommended, however, as a safe 

 one for the pei-son lifted, because the person lifting has to 

 shift the hold of both hands on the way up, and if this is 

 not deftly done an unpleasant fall is apt to result. (The 



last time I attempted a feat of the kind 1 was standing 

 before a tall wardrobe with my wife, when she remarked, 

 joking, "I wish I could get into that top shelf" — into 

 whose recesses she had been vainly reaching. I naturally 

 pretended to take her in earnest, and in another second she 

 was on the level of that shelf, but I fear not more favourably 

 placed for getting what she wanted than when on the floor. 

 In that case, however, there was no danger of a fall because 

 of the wardrobe's position. ) 



Nathalie, a French female gymnast, was able, according 

 to Farini, to take two .5G lb. weights from the ground, one 

 in each hand, and put them slowh' above her head. Let 

 those who can easily put up two such weights with a quicker 

 motion, try the slow movement, even with much smaller 

 weights, and the}" will recognise the difference. Farini 

 pointed out to Charles Reade that putting up an agile 

 gymnast is mere child's play to this, " because, in dealing 

 with the live object, the strong stoops, the agile springs, and 

 the strong arms are at an angle of -tS before the weight 

 tells ; now," proceeds Reade, " the ai-ms, as they near the 

 perpendicular, can hold up three times the ^\eight they can 

 put up." (He should rather have sjiid that the arms as they 

 near the perpendicular can put up three times the weight 

 they can lift up before they reach that position : they can, 

 however, lift up from the ground twice the weight they can 

 push up to their full upward reach.) 



Lifting at arms' length exercises, so far as the arms are 

 concerned, an entirely different set of muscles from those used 

 in putting up weights. Nor can strength be so satisfac- 

 torily tested, or compared, by the former as by the latter 

 exercise. A long-armed man is here at a disadvantage, and 

 judging by the weight he can lift, might appear weaker 

 than a short-armed man really of less power in the arms. 

 I remember the disgust with which when at college I found 

 men whom I knew to be no sti'onger than myself able to 

 lift greater weights at arms' length, till I noticed that the 

 unusual length of my arms, which span horizontally fully 

 half a foot more than my height, put me at a disadvantage, 

 owing to the extra leverage involved. Our strongest man 

 at Cambridge Univei-sity then (18.")<3 to 18G0 was my time) 

 was, I believe, Mr. Duncan Darroch, who rowed "four" in 

 the 'Varsity boat in 1858, the year when Cambridge rowed 

 the fiimous race (which they won by 2 feet 6 inches) with 

 the London (_'lub eight, manned by Casamajor, Playford, the 

 Paines, and other famous oarsmen of the days before 

 sliding seats were invented. Mr. Howard Snow, afterwards 

 one of the masters at Eton, and now — but with altered 

 name — head master at Cheltenham College, and himself a 

 fiimous oarsman, stroke of the Cambridge boat in 1857 (and 

 bracketed first in classics in 1858), wrote of Darroch, in 

 somewhat doggerel rhymes : — 



He'll lift as much as any other one can 



Will Duncan ; 

 He has the strength of an entire barrack, 



Has Darroch ! 



Darroch could lift a 56 lb. weight at arms' length. But 

 Darroch was short-armed for his height, and, as I remember 

 him, a muscle-bound man. Few men can expect by any 

 amount of training and practice to acquire the power of 

 lifting such a weight as 56 lbs. at arms' length. Thirty 

 pounds would be a very fair arms'-length lift for men of 

 average strength ; and even that would require exercise and 

 training. 



Very good exercise in lifting can be obtained without 

 special apparatus, as by lifting chairs in different ways. 

 Thus the chair may be lifted at arms' length by a front 

 rung gi-asped knuckles upwards or knuckles downwards ; or 

 by the lower end of a front leg — the back being in every 

 case brought to a vertical position, and so maintained while 



