KNOWLEDGE 



[JuLv 7, 1882. 



That inscription (one among others) in Kent's Hole, to 

 which reference i3 made above, does, however, lielp us 

 somewhat in the matter. On a large boss of stalagmite, 

 which rises from the floor, and which has been subject to 

 the continuous drip of lime-charged water from the roof, 

 this inscription is yet clearly to be read : " Robert Hedges, 

 of Ireland, Feb 20, 1688." Evidence of its genuineness is 

 at hand in the description of it left on record by the Rev. 

 J. MacEuery, who explored the cavern in 1825. He says 

 that "the letters are glazed over, and partly efl'aced," 

 showing that they had not been recently cut. That 

 description applies accurately to them now, after the lapse 

 of sixty years. Now, the film of stalagmite over these is 

 about one-twentieth of an inch in thickness, and the like 

 applies to still older inscriptions, in another chamber, 

 round the " Crypt of Dates," the genuineness of which 

 inscriptions there is no reason to doubt. 



If we take as our standard of reckoning the rate at 

 which the stalagmite has acccumulated on the Hedges boss 

 and apply it to the bed around it, which is in places five 

 feet thick, wo get a result as startling as it is probably 

 excessive, because we have assumed uniform climatal con- 

 ditions throughout True, in his notice of the last edition 

 of Lyall's " Antiquity of Man," Mr. Alfred Wallace, an 

 authority not given to over-estimate, remarks that the sum of 

 half-a-million represents the years that have probably elapsed 

 since flints of human workmanship were buried in the lowest 

 deposits of Kent's Cavern,"* and after allowing a far more 

 rapid rate for the formation of both the crystalline anj gra- 

 nular stalagmites (to say nothing of intercalated deposits) 

 than the evidence warrants, the estimate which demands the 

 lapse of tens of thousands of years since the entombment 

 of rude flakes in the breccia cannot be gainsaid. Some 

 words of Mr. Prestwich, in a paper read before the Royal 

 Society, and which Mr. Pengelly has already happily 

 quoted, may be repeated here. He says that, "just as 

 though ignorant of the precise height and size of a mountain 

 range fern in the distance, we need not wait for trigono- 

 metrical measurement to feel satisfied in our minds of the 

 magnitude of tlie distant peaks, so with this geological 

 epoch ; we see and know enough of it to feel how distant it 

 is from our time, and yet we are not in a position atpre-sent 

 to solve with accuracy the curious and interesting problem 

 of its precise age." 



HOW TO GET STRONG. 



in.— THE CHEST (continued). 



A CORRESPONDENT asks how the calf-skin bag (or 

 dumb-boxer) should be made, and how large it should 

 l>e. There is no rigid rule as to size, or material, or make. 

 A diBused hair pillow, doubled and tied up, will serve very 

 welL I'ut, if you take nine or Uin spindle-shaped pieces 

 of calfskin about •'> in. broad and from 18 in. to 2 ft. 

 long, and Bf;w together, they will form a bag which, filled 

 with sawdust or stuffed with hair, will be somewhat 

 handier for Ijoxing at 



The exercisers for expanding the chest hitherto considered 

 ^running, boxing, and inhaling to the full extent of the 

 lungi) produce their efTect chiefly in an indirect manner, 

 so far as the expansion of the chest is itself concerned, 

 though in a very dintct manner as regards the act of 

 breathing: the chest is made to expand because the lungs 

 jire exf>anded, either by the deep and quickened breatliing 

 resulting from rapid movement, or by the actual drawing in 



Nature, Oct. 2, 1873. 



of air in large quantity. We have now to consider exercises 

 which act directly to expand the chest, and thus help the 

 breathing apparatus indirectly, by giving it room for freer 

 action. For this purpose all exercises are good which 

 carry the arms well over the head, all those which carry 

 the arms out horizontally backwards, and all those which 

 bring the elbows close into the side with a backward motion 

 of the shoulders and upper nr»i>!. These last words must bo 

 specially noticed. Rowing, a capital exorcise for many 

 purposes, is nut, as is commonly thought, a good exercise 

 for the chest ; for though' at the finish of the stroke the 

 elbows are drawn close in to the sides and carried back 

 wards as far as possible, the shoulders and upper arms are 

 kept rather forward and drawn rather towards each other, 

 on account of the position of the hands on the oar, and 

 also because in hard rowing no strength can be spared for 

 a useless backward swing of the shoulders. In steady 

 rowing for pleasure, the hands may bo set a little further 

 apart, and the shoulders thrown well back at each stroke 

 with great advantage, so far as the health value of the 

 exercise is concerned. Rowing in this way is delightful, 

 though not at all suited for racing. 



Beginning with chest expansion by exercises taking the 

 arms over the head — the best exercises of all for increasing 

 chest-capacity — we note that there are scarcely any but 

 artificial exercises nowadays for this purpose, that is, there 

 are scarcely any exercises which thus work the arms, as 

 rowing, boxing, fencing, ifec, work them in other ways, or 

 as walking and running work the legs. Climbing ropes is 

 a rather severe form of this sort of exercise, not readily to 

 be practised by most persons, and too severe for men past 

 or nearing middle life, when the body is generally too 

 heavy. The strain on the deltoid muscles tells heavily 

 before much good has been done in the way of chest ex- 

 pansion. There is the same defect in hanging exercises on 

 the parallel bars, or on the trapeze. These are for athletes, 

 and even with them, more for the strengthening of the 

 deltoid and other special muscles than for the expansion of 

 the chest. 



Rather oddly, we receive just here, through the Editor, 

 a note from Sir Edmund Beckett, running as follows : — 



I do not know whctlior the writer on " How to got Stronff " will 

 care to licar that I know no cxcreiac whinli tends so much to oxpand 

 the cliost as bell-ringinp, being performod standing quilo upright. 

 I used to ring tho heaviest boll in poals, at Cambridge and eleo- 

 where, when I was young, and tho nino o'clock at St. Mary's nearly 

 every night, and I used always to feol that result. E. B. 



Bell-ringing would be just the sort of exercise wanted to 

 open the chest : for here, the hands being close together 

 (instead of acting, as in rowing, to contract tho chest) acts 

 — at the most cUcctivo moment — to expand it The con- 

 struction we were about to describe for arm-above-head 

 exercise to expand the chest, can very readily bo used to 

 give an effect akin to that obtained in bell-ringing — which 

 is fortunate, because only a limited portion of the com- 

 munity can ring bells. (For 1,000,000 able-bodied men in 

 London to get each lialf-an-hour's bell-ringing — peals of 

 eight — per day, it would l)e necessary that there should be 

 constant pealing from 2,600 steeples !) 



Let A, 15 (Fig. 1) be two pullies high up, on the same 

 level, against one of the walls of a room, W and w two 

 weight boxes (of course, mere weights will do) a AW, 

 bliij} stout cords passing over tho pulley and connecting a 

 and b, the two ends of a stout rod ab (a broom-handle will 

 serve) to the weight boxes, W, V). Tho short cord, cd, is 

 simply for drawing down tho rod, ah, till the upstretched 

 arms can reach it. 



Now let the rod ab be grasped overhead, the arms being 

 vertical, and therefore tho bands separated by the breadth 



