Furthermore, these dumb-bell exercises, in which the weight of the dumb-bells is gradually increased, become after a year or two very severe indeed, and one would like to know the collective opinion of doctors on such a point as this. Can it be good for a man of forty-five or fifty to manipulate weights like these, performing say for half-an-hour a day a series of exercises with them, some of which at any rate entail considerable strain? And if these exercises are not good, what is he to do? If after some years of hard work at them he does drop them, does he not become liable, or tend to become liable, to a fatty degeneration of the muscles, or at any rate to an increase of fat over the muscles? In the meantime, if the course has been “successful,” if the man is enormously developed in the muscles, particularly of the arm and shoulder, it will quite assuredly be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for him to change those muscles whose birth and breeding is due to these slow pushing movements that are intended to overcome the inertia of dead weight, into muscles which have to deal swift, not heavy, blows at objects which for practical purposes (golf balls, tennis balls, even cricket balls) have hardly any inertia at all. In other words, he will find it difficult to become even passably proficient at games which require rapidity of striking--and it is hard to name the game which does not--and yet entail almost no strain on the heart and arteries, in order to supply the place of those heavy exercises which he feels himself unable, without risk, to continue. Besides this, it seems not unlikely that the perpetual straining may deaden the fineness of touch and judgment so necessary in most games. But the quick, brisk movements such as we recommend in the chapter on exercises seem to us to be singularly without the disadvantages of dumb-bell systems, as regards monotony, for their very speed is undoubtedly exhilarating; nor do they admit of any risk in the way of straining, while they exercise the muscles more than dumb-bells do, though they do not so much strengthen them. They are, therefore, quite as health-giving, since health, unless a man is positively suffering from muscular feebleness, has practically nothing to do with sheer muscular strength, while it has a great deal to do with muscular fitness. On the other hand, they have this great advantage over dumb-bell systems, namely, that they directly and rapidly tend to increase the speed with which the muscles can make their effort, and thus for that very large class of people who desire to play games, and do so whenever they can, these movements are of the greatest help even in learning the game, and also in keeping the muscles in actual and _absolute_ practice for the game itself. They help, in fact, the right sort of muscle, they teach the light, rapid stroke which drives a ball. For the special exercises for each game, exercises which