Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/194

182 The prominence of athletic sports has directed much attention to the various problems that are intimately connected with their practice in their various forms, and naturally the question of the anatomical characteristics required for success in any branch of athletics is one of the first to be investigated in the light of modern physiology and anatomy.

One of the teachings of modern physiology is that function makes structure; that if horses are raced generation after generation



we get the slender, nervous race horse, while if they pull heavy loads we have developed the Clydesdale type. Again, if a man has to use his right hand and arm only, continuously in his work we get it large and brawny, while the rest of his muscular system may be but poorly developed. It is this specialism that gives such a law a chance of showing its workings, so that one can often pick out a man's trade by peculiarities in his physique. In athletics, which include the severest forms of physical labor.