Sept. 14, 1883.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



171 



DAN GEES OF SEA-BATHING. 



WE have recently had evidence of the three chief 

 dangers of sea-bathing. First it was a case akin 

 to the fatal bath of Alexander the Great, where death 

 was caused by suddenly plunging the body, when hot and 

 tired, into very cold water. Then came a case in which 

 cramp afl'ecting all the lower part of the body caused 

 death. Lastly, at Eastbourne, on Sunday, August 26, a 

 young man was drowned through bathing too soon after a 

 full meal. It is singular how people underestimate the 

 nature of the trial to which they expose their bodies in 

 sea-bathing. The trial is indeed one which can be borne 

 safely by any one in average health, under reasonable con- 

 ditions. But even for the healthy it involves a shock, the 

 reaction from which is what does good, not the shock itself, 

 which so far as it goes tends to lower the vital energies. 

 But to plunge into cold water when the vital energies 

 are already below par, or under conditions which are likely 

 to overtax the force of reaction is dangerous in the extreme. 

 Another dangerous practice is that of staying in the water 

 too long. To sea-bathing for the health Hesiod's old 

 saying may be applied. Half is better than the whole, 

 when the whole means the full time which the bather can 

 stay in the water without suflering. If a man can bear 

 twenty minutes in the water he will do well to take but 

 ten ; if he can bear ten, to take but five. When he stays 

 in the water for the shorter period he comes forth braced 

 lip and invigorated ; when he keeps in as long as he can 

 bear the cold he comes out at last tired and wearied, feels 

 depressed and languid for hours or perhaps for the rest of 

 the day, and probably sutlers from headache or other 

 evidence that the ner\ous energies have been overtaxed. — 

 Neivcdstle Chronicle. 



©ijitorial (goeieiip. 



It is hard when some quality — mental, moral, or phy- 

 sical — on the strength of which any one has come before 

 the public — is specially criticised as the one quality in 

 which such person is deficient. For instance, let us sup- 

 pose that when Disraeli told his constituents that " he 

 'stood' on his head" some one had rudely remarked that that 

 was his weakest place : this would have been as hard as it 

 would have been untrue. So, if I were told in connection 

 with my teachings in astronomy, that astronomy is just 

 the subject in which I am most ignorant, I suppose I 

 should not be greatly pleased : even if I were modest 

 enough to admit the soft impeachment, I should Ije pained 

 at the thouglit that my special ignorance on that subject 

 had remained so long unknown to me. It occurs to me to 

 note, l)y tlie way, that only a day or two since I came 

 across a passage in the Ollaim Free Press from which I 

 learnrd that ]Mr. Wiggins, the predictor of the famous 

 storm which was to have destroyed every ship at sea last 

 March, but somehow failed to do so, had pointed out so 

 far back as 1S7G my ignorance of astronomy. I had 

 lectured at St. John's, N.B., — I remember well that mild 

 Christmas time (where I had expected intense cold, but 

 walked from my lecture, in evening dress, with over- 

 coat over my arm); and I remember too my kindly greeting 

 there. I had said in the course of my lecture that the 

 moon has very littk; if any atmosphere. But next day 

 (wlien ] was half way towards New York) Sir. Wiggins 

 obser\ ed that as the moon reflects sunlight she must have 

 an atmosphere of considerable density, and also showed 

 how ignorant I must be not to know that So he found 



out that when I slightly criticised his storm-prediction, 

 casually referring to knavery or folly in explanation 

 thereof — I had been lying in wait six or seven years to 

 attack him. "All this time," he says "the Professor has 

 lain in his lair"! &c. It will be seen that I know or ought 

 to know how painful must be a charge of shortcoming in 

 some quality where one had imagined oneself rather excep- 

 tionally well off. I can sympathise therefore with Mr. 

 Oscar Wilde when a play of his is condemned for vulgarity 

 and coarseness by the Americans whom he sought to soften 

 and harmonise. And now more distressing news still 

 comes from across the Atlantic. A person went over there 

 not on the strength of head or understanding (other than 

 legs and feet) but trusting to beauty of limb and charm of 

 manner; and here is the Courier Journal, of Louis\-ille, 

 Ky., rejoicing that those hideous limbs and monstrous 

 hands and feet are gone from out the land. But the 

 Kentuckian — who usually sits on five chairs at once, 

 so long is he of limb, and so expansive in manner 

 — is unusually critical about feminine hands and feet. 

 The ladies of Kentucky are singularly favoured by nature 

 in that respect, insomuch that though the feet (for in- 

 stance) of an average St. Louis lady would not be thought 

 large in England it is a standing joke in Louisville, Ky. 

 that St. Louis shoes sent to the Centennial Exhibition, 

 were by a natural mistake placed in the canoe department. 

 Still the Kentuckian paper has not been over-polite to our 

 English visitor, who rather "stood" on her feet. 



Mr. Rojieike, whose " Artistic and Literary Corre- 

 spondence " I am willing enough to advertise gratis, seems 

 determined to show me that I ought to recognise the value 

 of his agency for distributing press notices to those men- 

 tioned in them. I was hard-hearted enough to say that 

 these were things to be avoided rather than sought. He 

 suggested in reply that though I might receive numbers of 

 ordinary notices from publishers, I might not see those 

 which attacked me, and he implied that these ■were 

 more ninnerous by far than I probalily imagined. Xow 

 my own idea has been, and is, that that ancient institution 

 {vide Job passim) the "d — d — (/e(fr good-natured friend," 

 had long since anticipated Mr. Romeike's agency, and that 

 I need not fear lest anything unpleasant about myself 

 should fail to reach me. But Mr. Romeike thinks dif- 

 ferently ; so, though I had expressed no burning desire to 

 see such notices, he has sent me all he has come across, — 

 to wit, within the last six months two out of seven (all 

 the seven having reached me earlier through the D. G. X.). 

 The last he sends me is ratlier pleasant than otherwise, 

 only Mr. Romeike carefully underlines (courteous gentle- 

 man that he is) the parts which he thinks likely to hurt. 

 Here is the passage, as it appears in Life, except only that 

 those words wliich the gentlemanly !Mr. Romeike under- 

 lines for my benefit appear here in italics : — 



" A paper on ' Poker Principles and Chance Laws,' by Sir. 

 R. A. Proctor, whose right to discuss this topic, otherwise indis- 

 putable, would be fortilied, in case it needed fortification, by his 

 famous victory over 'Boss.' Vnhappilij Mr. Proctor's numerous 

 iiccomplishments do not incUtde an accurate knozvledi/e of Ms native 

 tongue. In this article, for instance, he talks of ' the verhiage of 

 Poker' and of 'astrological ierbi<i;7f,' where a more correct writer 

 would have substituted tho word ' terminology' or ' nomenclature,' 

 or, more appropriately, if less elegantly, ' slang,' for that which we 

 have italicised. Furthermore, to pass from mere verbal criticism 

 to more important matters, it appears to us, though we say so with 

 tho utmost diflidenee, that Mr. Proctor'.'! statement on page 503, to 

 the effect that the odds against the thi-owiug of ' size ' after five 

 ' sizes ' have been already thrown, are only five to one, involves a 

 gross fallacy. True, to any one ignorant of the preceding thi'ows, 

 the odds against ' size,' or any particular number, turning up are 

 five to one. But to anyone who knows that 'size' has already 



