When the pupil begins to learn to row the brain has many things to think of; it has several orders to distribute simultaneously to its different employes--the various muscles required for the work--and these employes are, moreover, 'new to the business.' They have not yet, from want of practice, developed the vigour and strength which they will require hereafter; and also they know so little of what they have to do that they require incessant instruction from brain headquarters, or else they make blunders. But in time both master and servants, brain and muscles, begin to settle down to their business. The master becomes less confused, and gives his orders with more accuracy and less oblivion of details; the servants acquire more vigour, and pick up the instructions with more facility. At last the time comes when the servants know pretty well what their master would have them do, and act spontaneously, while the master barely whispers his orders, and has leisure to attend to other matters, or at all events saves himself the exertion of having momentarily to shout his orders through a speaking-trumpet. Meantime, as said before, the servants can only obey orders; and, if their original instructions have been blunders on the part of the master, they settle down to the reproduction of these blunders. Now it often happens that an oarsman, who is himself a good judge of rowing, and is capable of giving very good instructions to others, is guilty of many faults in his own oarsmanship. And yet it cannot be said of him that he 'knows no better' as regards those faults which he personally commits. On the contrary, if he were to see one of his own pupils rowing with any one of these same faults, he would promptly detect it, and would be able to explain to the pupil the why and the wherefore of the error, and of its cure. Nevertheless, he perpetrates in his own person the very fault which he discerns and corrects when he notes it in another! And the reason is this. His own oarsmanship has become mechanical, and is reproduced stroke after stroke without a distinct volition. It became faulty at the time when it was becoming mechanical, because the brain was not sufficiently conscious of the orders which it was dictating, or was not duly informed, from some external source, what orders it should issue. So the brain gave wrong orders, through carelessness or ignorance, or both, and continued to repeat them, until the muscles learnt to repeat their faulty functions spontaneously, and without the immediate cognisance of the brain.