1882.1 



KNOWLEDGE 



451 



HOW TO GET STRONG. 



THE WAIST. 



XTTE liave given enough chest exercises to hist our 

 \ » followers for months ; but it is not well to limit 

 exercise to any one portion of the trunk, as those do who 

 pin their faith on rowing, or boxing, or tricyling, or running, 

 or any other special kind of bodily training. 



We come now to certain muscles which are usually very 

 much neglected in this country, especially by the fairer, 

 and in this respect certainly the weaker, sex. When we 

 hear men talking of wearing stays, or find that they are 

 oven thinking of such an absurdity, we have in reality the 

 clearest evidence that the abdominal muscles have been 

 neglected. A man in decent condition should as soon 

 think of taking to crutches as to corsets. 



Weak abdominal muscles are readily detected in walking. 

 If a sense of distress across the abdomen and around the 

 loins is felt after moderate walking exercise, especially after 

 a slow walk, if the shoulders begin to hang forward, or the 

 trunk lean forward from the hips, we may be sure that the 

 svaist muscles want attending to. This also shows that 

 walking affords them exercise. But it is not the best 

 e.xercise for them. 



Wearing a corset, or -shoulder-straps, or a backboard, 

 will prevent you from feeling this sense of distress about 

 the waist. So will lying on your back all the time. If 

 you like, you can adopt these measures. In that case we 

 are writing, not for you, but for others not quite so lazy 

 or so unwise. 



Taking, first, walking exercise, directed to the special 

 purpose of strengthening the abdominal muscles, observe 

 that a long wearisome walk will do more harm than good 

 in the long run. Take a sharp, steady two-mile walk, at 

 not less than three and a half miles an hour, and not more 

 than four ; keep the head up, shoulders well back, the 

 body erect, the abdomen slightly forward, but not enough 

 to hollow the back. Half a mile walked in this way will 

 do more good than four or five miles at a dragging pace. 

 The heart and lungs have good space to act in, and you 

 presently find that they do act, and with energy. It is in 

 maintaining this attitude that the muscles around the waist 

 are exercised. 



In running, which ought to be a daily exercise with all 

 men in good health (though, as we have said, not suddenly 

 or rashly begun, but moderately), the waist muscles are 

 called into play if the style of running is well chosen — 

 shoulders held well back, body upright, and strides long 

 and energetic. 



Turn now to indoor exercise for the waist. 



Here is one which will very quickly harden the abdo- 

 minal muscles. Sit on a bed with the toes hitched under 

 the cross-bar of the foot-board (you can pad the bar if it 

 hurts your instep at all), so that when you lie back your 

 head falls on the pillow. (Pitch the pillow out, however.) 

 Sway the trunk steadily backward till you are lying in a 

 horizontal position. Then steadily draw it upwards again, 

 and sway it over till the shoulders are well over the knees, 

 keeping the trunk straight throughout both movements. 

 Draw in the breath as you sway backward, and expel t\w 

 breath as you sway forward — doing each to the full extent 

 of your lungs. Thus you combine good chest exercis(! with 

 excellent work for the waist muscles. The exercise need 

 not, of course, be taken on a bed. You can sit on the 

 fioor with the feet held by a strap, or by the lower part of a 

 surticiently solid and heavy piece of furniture (be very 

 careful on this point). Or in pleasant weather you can 

 take this exercise in the open air, — as indeed most of the 

 exercises suitable for waist strengthening. 



Here follow two forms of exercise which are recom- 

 mended by Blaikie. They ran be taken in the open air, but 

 most would prefer to limit their use to indoors, especially 

 the first one : — (1.) Lie flat on the back. Taking first a 

 deep, full breath, draw the feet upward, keeping the legs 

 straight and close together, until the legs are vertical. 

 Lower them slovrh/ till horizontal, then raise and repeat, 

 till you find you would much rather stop. (2.) Keep the 

 legs down, and first filling the chest, draw the body up, 

 keeping the trunk quite straight, till you are erect. Then 

 sway slowly back; repeat as often as you find it con- 

 venient. You need not go on for half-an-hour, or even a 

 quarter, unless you like. With practice you will find that 

 you can not only do this pretty often, but lift a heavy 

 weight along with you. 



(To he continued.) 



THE ATMOSPHERE OF SPACE. 



ON the last lines of p. .".99, Mr. Proctor says that M. 

 Faye's calculation of the quantity of inter-planetary 

 air that the sun would collect around himself under the 

 conditions stated by Dr. Siemens, '• forces us to reject 

 absolutely and decisively such an atmosphere as Dr. 

 Siemens and Mr. W. M. Williams have imagined." This 

 forces me to reject absolutely and decisively such a 

 bracketing of my imagining with that of Dr. Siemens. 



The atmosphere which I have imagined is simply and 

 exclusively that which would remain after all the solar 

 accumulation to which M. Faye alludes is completed. I 

 start at the very outset with the assumption that this has 

 been done not only by our sun, l>ut also by every other 

 orb in space. 



The density of this residuum of inter-planetary and 

 interstellar atmosphere depends upon its inherent gaseous 

 elasticity, and this elasticity is the material manifestation 

 of heat If no heat were radiated into space, it would be 

 the vacuum imagined by the astronomers who are " enjoy- 

 ing the joke " of an universal atmosphere ; but neither 

 their amusement nor their formulating can disprove the 

 necessity of the universal extension of atmosphere matter 

 into all space that is receiving solar, stellar, and 

 planetary radiation, unless they can prove that the laws 

 of Nature cease to operate at the limits which they assign 

 to our terrestrial atmosphere. 



W. Mattieu Williams. 



TRANSITS OF VENUS. 



By RiciiAnD A. Pkoctor. 



(Coiidnucd from page 410.) 



I SHALL next show how Halley and Delisle contrived 

 two simple plans to avoid the manifest dithculty of 

 carrying out in a direct manner the simultaneous observa- 

 tions, described at p. 118, from stations thousands of miles 

 apart. 



Wo have seen that the determination of the sun's dis- 

 tance by observing Venus on the sun's face would be a 

 matter of perfect simplicity if we could be quite sure that 

 two observations were correctly made, and at exactly the 

 same moment, by astrononiers stationed one far to the 

 north, the other far to the south. 



The former would see Venus as at A, Fig. 6, the other 

 would see her as at B ; and the distance between the two 



