to enable the pusher to raise greater and greater weights above the head, but does the ordinary man, does the athlete himself desire to get strength of that kind? For the ordinary man, in the first place, does the development of fore-arm, biceps, or triceps tend in any way to increase his health, except inasmuch as the exertion thus put forth certainly enlarges some few muscles and tends to produce action of the skin by reason of heat? As far as muscular development goes he would do far better to exercise the larger muscle-areas, and for the other, a Turkish bath will give him the equivalent of a week’s exercising. The fallacy that lies at the bottom of this dumb-bell and “developer” work, in fact, is that large and prominent muscles imply not only strength but health. That the use of muscles tends to both is undeniable, but for purposes of health the muscles employed are mainly the unimportant ones, while for purposes of strength, valuable chiefly to those who wish to employ muscles with a view to excellence in athletics, the strength obtained is wholly the wrong sort of strength. It is here that the dumb-bell and developer system goes utterly and hopelessly astray. Used as an adjunct, it will assist a weak muscle to arrive at a certain girth and bulk, but considered as a cause of any successful stroke at a game, it is much more an enemy than a friend. For at all games, with a possible exception perhaps in the case of rowing, as far as strength comes into the question, it comes in as a motor-power to produce speed, whereas dumb-bell exercises have for their object, as a whole, the slow pushing of gradually increased weights. A modicum of strength is of course necessary to propel anything anywhere, but the main thing, the thing to be acquired, is speed in the muscle, in order to impart velocity to the object. And the muscles of those whose sole training is dumb-bell exercise are admirably unfitted to impart it. The weights they can lift are no doubt prodigious, but we doubt whether any man reared entirely on dumb-bells (and the more he had of that diet, the better for our point) could hit a ball over the pavilion at Lord’s, make a really difficult force at tennis, drive a golf ball two hundred yards, turn a fast outside back-bracket at skating, or send in a really hot shot at Association football. In fact, the more developed he was on dumb-bell lines, the less likely he would be to be able to do any of these things; the muscle acquired is of the wrong order, it has sacrificed its speed for bulk, it is the strong engine of the luggage-train, not the strong engine of the greyhound express. And if this is not so, how does it come about that some professional strong man has never yet attained immense pre-eminence in any branch of athletics, if such strength were the desirable sort? Surely in his spare moments he might send a few balls over the gasworks at Kennington, or drive the green of the long hole at Sandwich. At golf, particularly,