Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 22.djvu/342

328 arms the excellent system of gymnastics for girls recently established by a lady in various parts of London, with the approval, after careful and repeated inspection by myself, of Dr. Richardson, Mrs. Garrett Anderson, and others, is all that can be desired. The Swedish and other exercises effected without apparatus are of little use, as idle and indolent girls who stand most in need of physical training easily comply with the form, but evade the spirit and hearty compliance which such systems demand. These systems lack motive to complete an exercise, while simple apparatus, such as balls, dumb-bells, and bars, compel it by keeping the end in view, and giving an impetus to its performance. With half the care which mothers spend on dressing and decking-out their children, often in unsuitable clothing, they might, with a little help from their medical advisers, prevent most of the deformities which mar the physical beauty, comfort, and health of their offspring; and no time seems more appropriate than the present for directing the attention of medical practitioners, and through them of parents, to the means of attaining these objects, as the short walking-dresses worn by women and girls at the present time reveal to all of us to what a great, indeed unexpected, extent the ugly deformities of the feet and ankles to which I have referred exist, especially among the well-to-do and higher classes.—Lancet.



HE distribution of the Greenwich signals from the General Post-Office in London is effected by means of the Chronopher or Time-carrier, shown in perspective in Fig. 6, and in front elevation in Fig. 7. To this instrument the hourly signal from the observatory is sent by means of a special under-ground wire. Branching out from it are four groups of wires: 1. Metropolitan, running to points in London only. 2. Provincial Short, to points not more than fifty miles from London, as Brighton, etc. 3. Provincial Medium, to points farther away, as Hull, etc. 4. Provincial Long, to extreme points, as Edinburgh, Belfast, etc. The ends of each of the four groups are brought 