108 



discovi:hy 



sloping platform, etc., can be accurately measured, the 

 ultimate object being to discover the most economical 

 way the human machine can do a given piece of work. 

 The apparatus for registering the temperature, arterial 



Fig. 2.— testing THE liNliRGY AND RESIST.\NCIS OF 

 WHEELING A BARROW UPHILL AT A GIVEN SPEED. 



pressure, and psychical reactions of the person under 

 experiment are on tables beneath the platform. 



It is with this new moving platform that Professor 

 Langlois, working in collaboration with MM. Chailley- 

 Bert and Faillie, has explained the phenomenon 

 known among runners and athletes as "second 

 wind." This phenomenon, which consists in the dis- 

 appearance of brcathlessness some time after a 

 rapid start, gave place to various interpretations 

 by physiologists. In the opinion of Lagrange the 

 disappearance of a runner's uneasiness in breathing 

 was due to a better utihsation of his lungs ; whilst 

 others decided that it was owing to a modification of 

 the sensibility of the bulbar centres. Experiments 

 with the moving platform at the Faculty of Medicine 

 have now proved that " second wind " is connected with 

 a real and momentary diminution of the expenditure 

 of energy, although the amount of work done is not 

 diminished. It is due to a better adaptation of the 

 locomotor apparatus of the human machine. 



Maps : Their History, Characteristics and Uses. By 



Sir Herbert George Fordham. (Cambridge 



University Press, 7s. 6d.) 

 The Mneme. By Richard Semon. (George Allen 



& Unwin, Ltd., i8s.) 

 Simple Lessons on the Weather. For School use and 



General Reading. By E. Stenhouse, B.Sc. 



(Mcthuen, 4s.) 



The Return of John 

 Clare, 



riic Northamptonshire Peasant Poet 



By Edmund Blunden, M.C. 



Tm.RE was born at Helpston, near Peterborough, in 

 1793, a peasant's son who was destined to live to tlie 

 allotted span through strange and sometimes bitter 

 vicissitudes, and whose name was to suffer after his 

 death changes of reputation hardly less surprising. 

 The life-story of John Clare is not now as unfamiliar 

 as it was twenty years ago, but it will be well to epito- 

 mise it once again here, with the benefit of materials 

 discovered within the last few weeks, before we con- 

 sider the nature of his achievement, the manuscripts 

 which he has left behind, and the romance of his return 

 to fame. 



Those who pass through the Dutch scenery and 

 straggling cottages of Helpston cannot but notice an 

 ugly early English memorial at the cross-roads, in- 

 scribed with lines of verse by John Clare, and usually 

 ornamented with barrel-hoops which the village child- 

 ren throw like quoits over it. If curiosity enquire 

 further, there is scarcely a soul in the place but will 

 know something of " Poet Clare," and will point out 

 the cottage of his birth, now marked with a modest 

 tablet. The cottage is in the main the same as when 

 the child Clare, already a dreamer, set out with his 

 father's dinner and on voyages of discover}' — once he 

 attempted to reach the horizon — towards 1800. Clare's 

 father, a day-labourer, was a behever in education, 

 and the little boj' shared his faith, so that by his 

 thirteenth year he had read every book in his school- 

 master's library, and was in a fair way to become a 

 master of copperplate, of land surveying, and other 

 sciences then fasliionable at schools. Earlier still, 

 John Clare had learnt old ballads on the cow-common, 

 which were another sort of education ; and so, his 

 exercise-books contain his first scribbled verses. With 

 a faithful friend the boy began to hunt and collect 

 old books, and his distaste for football was a source of 

 anxiety to the neighbours. There are two other school- 

 day episodes which we must mark : his fit of terror at 

 seeing a labourer fall from a haycart and break his neck, 

 the after-effects of which sight were not easily disposed 

 of ; and his companionship with Mary Joyce. In this 

 companionship began that unfulfilled love which was 

 to dominate Clare for almost every day and every 

 poem of his long and troubled life. 



We must hasten over the vain attempts of Clare, on 

 leaving school, to become a lawyer's clerk and to avoid 

 becoming a drudge. Next door was an inn, still stand- 



