the body forwards and hollowing the back, until the hands go as near as they can go to the heels. Recover slowly and steadily the erect position. Repeat this exercise half a dozen times,-or a dozen if you feel equal to it. If you give a little time and attention to this exercise every day, you will not only find the abdominal muscles wonderfully improved, but that your lower limbs have felt the strain, and benefited by the exercise.

At pantomimes you may see the extent to which, by such backward bending, the muscles of the abdomen may be stretched and made elastic. But it is not essential to your happiness, or the happiness of those around you, that you should be able to touch your heels with your head, or, going a little farther that way, to bring your head forward between your feet and smile upon your friends from that comparatively low level. But though this, judged by the test of happiness, is not necessary or even desirable (for, as Bishop Peter of Rum-ti-foo remarked, such contortions viewed by your friends, might "pain them very much"), yet the abdominal muscles, cramped by much sitting over books and manuscripts, will be all the better for so much of this sort of exercise as may stretch and well loosen them.

There are many other exercises without apparatus, or with only dumb-bells or clubs, which have an excellent effect in the same direction.

In using clubs (Indian) for the backward swing, the ordinary way, and an excellent way for its par

ticular end, is to keep the body rigidly upright. The work then tells chiefly on the chest, shoulders, and arms; in so far as it acts at all on the waist muscles, it tends rather to harden and contract than to limber them. But now change the mode of swinging, letting the body yield as the clubs are swung forward overhead and backward,—so that, as the clubs end their backward sweep, the body is well arched forwards and the ends of the clubs almost strike the calves or even the heels. (But avoid actually striking, for, while the blow will cause discomfort, it will not help the development of any particular set of muscles.) Now, after the full backward swing has thus been reached, swing the clubs well over the head to the front, making all the stretched muscles of the front of the waist take part in the beginning at least of the pull. Do not mind the shoulders and chest coming well forward as the clubs swing down past the feet and backwards. In fact, throughout this club exercise give up the firm upright position which is essential in the ordinary form of the overhead swing. Make your body bend well forward as the clubs come down in front, even so far if you like that the swing of the club backwards beyond the feet may be necessary to save you from toppling over forwards. Contrariwise let your abdomen come well forward as you send the clubs backwards over your head, so far that there is an elastic back pull available from the abdominal muscles as you begin to bring the clubs up again.

This exercise has a splendid effect in correcting the

defects of most of our English exercises. You will find the arms get less work than you might expect, though they are not idle. The shoulders are well worked; but the waist muscles, front and back, are those most benefited. (We will look after the side waist muscles later on.) The hardest work of all, however, is generally done below the knee in this fine exercise.

The dumb-bells can be similarly used with a swaying body, bending forwards and arching backwards alternately. But they do not give the same pleasant sensation as well-chosen Indian clubs (not too long). Growing lads in particular get much more benefit from the swaying exercise with the clubs than with the dumb-bells. Indeed, it is said that the use of heavy dumb-bells is apt to check growth.

Blaikie mentions rightly as good for the extension and limbering of the abdominal muscles "all work above the head, such as swinging an axe or sledge; putting up dumb-bells, especially when both hands go up together; swinging by the hand from a rope or a bar, or pulling the body up till the chin touches the hands; standing with back to the pulley weights' (described in former papers), "and taking the handles in the hands and starting with them high over the head, then pushing the hands far out forward; standing two or more feet from the wall and placing the hands side by side against it almost as high up as your shoulders, then throwing the chest as far forward as possible," besides the work of special trades,

such as ceiling work by the plasterer and painter, hauling down ropes by sailors, and so forth.

Sparring and fencing are both excellent exercises for the front abdominal muscles. You get the best exercise in this way when practising alone; because you can work systematically, using right and left sides equally. The part of the work which tells most in the way we are considering is not the lunge in fencing nor the delivery of the blow in sparring, but the recovery in the former and the drawing backward of the head and shoulders in the latter. Quickness in all such movements is well worth acquiring, apart from mere muscular development.

A capital plan for sparring is to face a mirror too far from you to be struck, and to deliver your blow sharply in such a way that your fist hides whatever part of your image in the glass you may wish (as forehead, eye, nose, mouth, neck or chin); then recover sharply, bring the striking arm (elbow bent) down to your side, and throwing up the other sharply as if to ward a blow aimed at your face.

CHAPTER IV.

MUSCLES OF THE LOINS.

PROBABLY there is no set of muscles telling more

on the strength of the body as a whole than those of the loins, or the muscles in the small of the back, along either side of the spine. In nearly every form of exercise these muscles are taxed; so that if they are weak a man cannot do well in rowing, leaping, running, lifting, or any exercises akin to them.

But perhaps the most important consideration in connection with these loin muscles is that at any time. we may be called on to use them in such a way that if they are weak they may be strained and perhaps permanently injured. Some one falls in a swoon, perhaps, and must be lifted; but in the effort to lift even the light form of a delicate girl the muscles of the loins, if at all weak, are severely taxed. Or you may be obliged in travelling to haul a heavily-loaded valise into a railway carriage, or out of it, or across a platform, or up steps, no porter being about who will do the work for you.

I have known a man apparently strong disabled for four or five days by a strain of the loin muscles