The acquirement of skill lies in the training of the nerve rather than the muscle. A simple movement requires only a nerve impulse to the acting muscle, while a complicated movement requires a wave of impulses to the accessory and antagonistic groups of muscles which control and steady the movement. It is easy to see how, in the first efforts to perform complicated movements, the contractions of the muscles will be jerky and inaccurate, many useless muscles will be employed, and the expenditure of nervous energy will be out of all proportion to the result, and these first attempts at new feats of skill rapidly exhaust the attention. This is well illustrated in the first efforts of a child learning to walk. Exercises of strength and skill train that alertness of mind so essential in ordinary life. They shorten the period between thought and action, producing what is known as “presence of mind.” =The Relative Proportions of a Perfect Female Form.=—The relative proportions of a perfect female form, as deduced by modern sculptors from the Greek statues, are as follows: With a height of five feet five inches, the weight should be one hundred and thirty-eight pounds. The woman should, with the arms extended, measure from tip to tip of the middle finger, five feet five inches; that is, exactly her own height. The length of the hand should be one-tenth, the foot one-seventh, and the diameter of the chest one-fifth that of the height. The distance from the perineum to the ground should measure the same as from the perineum to the top of the head. The knee should be exactly midway between the perineum and the heel. The distance from the elbow to the little finger should be the same as the distance from the elbow to the middle of the chest. The measurement from the top of the head to the chin should be the same as the length of the foot, and there should be the same distance between the chin and the armpits. A woman of this height should measure twenty-nine inches around the waist, thirty-four inches around the bust, if taken under the arms, and forty-three inches if measured over them. The upper arm should measure thirteen inches and the wrist six inches. The calf of the leg should measure fourteen and one-half inches, the thigh twenty-five inches, and the ankle eight inches. The table on page 297, compiled by Dr. Weisse, the Medical Statistician of the New York Life Insurance Company, “A Table of Standard Weights for Women,” is based on the average weights of over 58,000 insured women, and is given to show the normal relation between the height and weight. A point of extreme interest in the table, and one that is not generally recognized, is the variation in weight, independent of the height, at different ages. [Illustration: PLATE IV Juno.] [Illustration: PLATE V Venus de Capua.]