66 THE HUNTING-FIELD. 



keep tliis elasticity in play. We see public 

 dancers, at forty, whose elasticity is not dimi- 

 nished perceptibly to the eye of the audience. It 

 is thus with some runners, walkers, and vaulters ; 

 but if, at the age of twenty, any one of these 

 were to leave off his usual training exercise, in a 

 very few weeks his elasticity would be most visi- 

 bly decreased, in a few months most materially 

 impaired, in two or three years so irretrievably 

 injured as probably never to be completely re- 

 stored ; and at forty he would, if he again tried 

 any of his former exploits, find himself about 

 as elastic as a well-dried blackthorn walking- 

 stick. 



I have heard it remarked, and particularly in 

 reference to steeple-chase horses, that quadrupeds 

 do not seem to lose their elastic powers propor- 

 tionally so early in life as men do ; and this 

 remark is natural enough when we daily see aged 

 horses jump as wide and high as those of four 

 or five years old, while, on the other hand, we 

 rarely see a man of even thirty able to cope with 

 youths of eighteen in exercise requmng great 

 elasticity of limb. 



It is not my province here to enter on any dis- 

 quisition on the parallel periods when the elastic 

 qualities of biped and quadruped decline, or how 

 long, under ordinary circumstances and treat- 

 ment, they may be preserved in each ; but why 



