week, have proved exceedingly popular in some of our towns. These exercises do not require fixed apparatus or a special hall. Dr. Lewis himself is now training regular teachers to carry on the same good work, and his movement is undoubtedly the most important single step yet taken for the physical education of American women.

Further on we shall have occasion to outline the development of military drill and discipline as a feature in school and college training, and to speak of the stimulus given by the War to all forms of bodily training and exercise, and especially to athletic sports and contests At this point we need only note that, although what we may term the light gymnastic movement was instrumental in causing the erection of a considerable number of school and college gymnasia and the inauguration of a few poorly-endowed and rudely-organized departments of physical culture, the force of the movement was soon spent, and the schemes for physical training assumed a semi-military character.

OPENING OF THE ERA OF BUILDING GYMNASIA IN COLLEGES.

The Amherst, Harvard, and Yale gymnasia, as was stated above, were built in 1859-60. Their external dimensions were, respectively, 72 by 50 feet, 85 by 50 feet, and 100 by 50 feet. They cost, respectively, in round numbers, $15,000, $10,000, and $13,000, and were, for their time, elaborate and well furnished structures. The Amherst gymna sium was named the Barrett Gymnasium, in honor of Benjamin Barrett, M.D., of Northampton, Mass., who was the largest contributor to the fund for its erection. Dr. Barrett's name does not appear on the roll of the Round Hill School; but it is not unlikely that familiarity with the workings of that institution may have been influential in determining his gifts to the Amherst gymnasium. One gentleman, who declined to give his name, gave $8,000 toward the building of the Harvard gymnasium. These three gymnasia have all been outgrown, and those at Amherst and Cambridge have been replaced by costly and vastly improved edifices.

CHARACTER OF THE TRAINING ADOPTED.

From the outset compulsory exercise has been required of all ablebodied students at Amherst, under the control and direction of an educated physician, whose professorial chair was accorded a place at the faculty table. Gymnastics have never been required at Harvard, where Dr. D. A. Sargent was, in 1879, appointed Assistant Professor of Physical Training, and Director of the Hemenway Gymnasium. His predecessors were a professional teacher of boxing, and a master of military drill. At Yale College no very comprehensive or commendable system of administration has as yet been worked out.

DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION AT AMHERST

COLLEGE.

The salient facts concerning the beginning, growth, and peculiarities of the department of hygiene and physical education of Amherst College demand our attention at this point; for, as has been well said by President Eliot of Harvard, "It is to Amherst College that the colleges of the country are indebted for a demonstration of the proper mode of organizing the department of physical training."

VIEWS OF PRESIDENT STEARNS.

When the late W. A. Stearns, D.D., was inaugurated as President of Amherst College, in 1854, he devoted a considerable portion of his discourse to enforcing the proposition that no course of education was complete that did not devote special attention to securing the normal development and healthy working of the body. In his first report to the trustees, in 1855, President Stearns said:

No one thing has demanded more of my anxious attention than the health of the students. The waning of the physical energies in the midway of the college course is almost the rule, rather than the exception, among us, and cases of complete breaking down are painfully numerous.

A year later he tells the trustees that the breaking down of the health of the students is, in his opinion, "wholly unnecessary." In his report for 1859, President Stearns again returns to the consideration of the question of students' health, and says:

Time and experience have convinced me of an imperious demand, in the circumstances of an academic life, for immediate and efficient action on this subject. Many of our students come from farms, mechanic shops, and other active occupations, to the hard study and sedentary habits of college. Physical exercise is neglected, the laws of health are violated, the protests and exhortations of instructors and other friends are unheeded. The once active student soon becomes physically indolent, his mental powers become dulled, his movements and appearance indicate physical deterioration. By the time Junior year is reached many students have broken down in health, and every year some lives are sacrificed. Physical training is not the only means of preventing this result, but it is among the most prominent of them. If it could be regularly conducted, if a moderate amount of physical exercise could be secured as a general thing to every student daily, I have a deep conviction, founded on close observation and experience, that not only would lives and health be preserved, but animation and cheerfulness and a higher order of efficient study and intellectual life would be secured. It will be for the consideration of this Board, whether, for the encouragement of this sort of exercise, the time has not come when efficient measures should be taken for thé erection of a gymnasium and the procuring of its proper appointments.

These remarks were rendered emphatic by a statement concerning the death of two seniors who had broken down under college life.

INSTITUTION OF THE DEPARTMENT BY THE TRUSTEES.

The trustees concluded that the time for erecting a gymnasium had come, and set about raising the money for it, with the result before alluded to. It was unanimously voted by the trustees

To establish a department of physical culture in this college, and that the duties of its professor shall be:

(1) To take charge of the gymnasium and give instruction to the students in gymnastics.

(2) To take a general oversight of the health of the students, and to give such instruction on the subject as may be deemed expedient, and under the direction of the Faculty, like all the other studies.

(3) To teach elocution so far as it is connected with physical training.

(4) He shall give lectures from time to time upon hygiene, physical culture, and other topics pertaining to the laws of life and health, including some general knowledge of anatomy and physiology.

(5) The individual appointed to have charge of this department shall be a thor-i oughly-educated physician, and, like other teachers and professors, shall be a member of the college Faculty. It is distinctly understood that the health of the students shall at all times be an object of his special watch, care, and counsel.

At the suggestion of Dr. Nathan Allen, of Lowell, Mass., the wellknown writer on hygiene and sociology, then and now one of the trustees of the college, it was voted to designate the head of the newly created department as the Professor of Hygiene and Physical Education. Dr. Allen was also mainly responsible for the definition of the duties of the professorship as embodied in the vote quoted above.

The plan of the president and Faculty alluded to under the second head of this vote was as follows:

First, The main object shall not be to secure feats of agility and strength, or even powerful muscle, but to keep in good health the whole body. Second, That all the students shall be required to attend on its exercises for half an hour, designated for the purpose, at least four days in the week. Third, The instructor shall assign to each individual such exercises as may be best adapted to him, taking special care to prevent the ambitious from violent action and all extremes, endeavoring to work the whole body, and not overwork any part of it. Fourth, That while it may not be expedient to mark the gradation of attainment, as in the intellectual branches, yet regularity, attention, and docility should be carefully noted, so as to have their proper weight in the deportment column of the student's general position. Fifth, That some time shall be allowed out of study hours for those volunteer exercises which different men, according to their tastes, may elect for recreation, and particularly that the bowling alleys be not given up to promiscuous use, but be allotted at regular hours to those who wish to make use of them—all these volunteer exercises, of whatever kind, to be under the supervision of the gymnasium instructor. Sixth, That the building shall always be closed before dark, that no light shall be used in it, and no smoking or irregularities of any kind shall be allowed in it. Seventh, That the instructor ought to be a member of the Faculty, and give in to it his marks and occasional accounts, and receive directions as other officers of the college are accustomed to do.

The department has been administered from the first without any material deviation from the plan thus outlined.

HISTORY OF THE DEPARTMENT SINCE 1860.

In August, 1860, J. W. Hooker, M.D., a graduate of Yale College, was appointed Professor in this department. It is said of him that he had "given special attention to physical training, and, being himself a skillful gymnast, possessed qualities that eminently fitted him for starting such an enterprise. But before the close of the year his health failed, and he resigned his position, and died in about two years afterward." The attention and coöperation of the students were the more easily enlisted in the new departure, owing to the martial spirit then so rife. During the spring of 1861 Colonel Lyman, a distinguished drill-master, was employed to give instruction and training in military tactics and exercises.

In August, 1861, Edward Hitchcock, M.D., a graduate of Amherst College and of the Harvard Medical School, was appointed Dr. Hooker's successor. Dr. Hitchcock has served continuously in that capacity from then till now.

The best exposition of the Amherst system of training and its results is found in Dr. Hitchcock's "Report of Twenty Years Experience in the Department of Physical Education and Hygiene in Amherst College, to the Board of Trustees, June 27, 1881. Amherst, Mass.: Press of C. A. Bangs & Co., 1881," from which the following extracts are taken:

Physical culture as expressed to Amherst College students by the experience of the past twenty years, means something besides, something in addition to, muscular exercise. It includes cleanliness of skin, attention to stomach and bowels, relaxation from daily mental work, freedom from certain kinds of petty discipline, but with so much requirement and restraint as will give coherence, respect, and stability to the methods of maintaining health and the men employing them.

The way in which students here are called upon to secure health, and its correct and normal maintenance for college requirements, is to be sure of some active, lively; and vigorous muscular exercise at stated periods; not requiring a rigid military or hardening drill of certain portions of the body, but offering them such exercises as shall, while regularly engaged in, be vigorous, pleasant, recreative, and at the same time, even without a manifest consciousness of it, be calling into exercise their pow ers in active, vigorous, easy, and graceful movements. Light wooden dumb-bells, weighing about one pound each, are placed in the hand, and then a series of movements are directed and timed by music, occupying in all from 20 to 30 minutes each day, and are simultaneously performed by a whole class under the lead of the captain. Believers in heavy gymnastics are apt to regard our exercises as perhaps well enough for girls and children, because they are only the swinging of one-pound dumbbells for less than half an hour. And they would reflect upon the exercise and call it calisthenics, and not dignify it by the term gymnastics. To this we would only say, "What's in a name?" If calisthenics only accomplishes what we need, our wants are satisfied. Certain it is that the young men at the close of one of these exercises, with the temperature at 60°, have ordinarily secured moisture on the skin, are breathing full and deeply, the blood circulates, the abdominal viscera are sufficiently stimulated, and their muscles are limber and elastic; they have gained good exercise, and the whole man has the feeling that he has worked in a physical way, and yet is not exhausted. The whole body in the loose and easy uniform, unconstrained by a rigid piece of apparatus, is given a freedom of action which cannot

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be acquired by the stolid march, or the constraint of either fixed or many kinds of movable gymnastic apparatus; and, lastly, the students generally feel, withal, that they have had a good time. And the mental and social freedom allowed and encouraged in these exercises conduces to the rapid and healthful evaporation of superfluous animal spirits, generated by the physical and mental confinement of study.

And while our methods are not so perfect as might be devised with more complete apparatus and better men to direct, if health of college be the only thing to be considered, they do seem to be good as far as they go; enough for the large majority, and of some service to all.

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During the first few years of our work, the simpler and easier forms of heavy gymnastic work were required of all the class; every man was expected to practice heavy gymnastics under direction of the leader, one of the class. This became very tedious work, irksome and impossible for some men to do except with such effort, moral and physical, as was injurious to be put on a large part of every class. But it was found out that the men who were sound in all four of their limbs and eyesight could go through movements enough with wooden dumb-bells to secure the necessary muscular waste and development for healthful study, and hence no requirement for heavy gymnastic work has been made of any student for the past fifteen years. At the same time there are a few who take as naturally to heavy gymnastics, and as profitably too, as ducks to water, and these are allowed and encouraged to reasonable efforts in this direction. These at first are guided and watched, but they are at length allowed and expected to go on with their exercise in this direction at their own discretion, save with the aid of one of the older classes who has shown himself the best gymnast in college.

And once during each year a prize exhibition is held, when the individual students may compete with each other in heavy gymnastics, and the classes may show their proficiency in light exercises with dumb-bells and marching. For the first few years the morning hour was secured as the best time for the physical exercises of the college. And while in theory, and perhaps fact, this is the best time for exercise, yet the hour of early evening, between daylight and darkness, has come to be the time which we have of late most largely employed for gymnastics.

STATISTICAL WORK AND RESULTS.

One of the first duties I felt called upon to perform after your appointment to this Professorship, was to prepare blanks for several anthropometric observations of the students of college. This I did partly to enable the students to learn by yearly comparison of themselves how they are getting on as regards the physical man. The ulterior object, however, was to help ascertain what are the data or constants of the typical man, and especially the college man. I have conceived no theory on the subject, and have instituted but very few generalizations; but my desire has been to carefully compile and put on record as many of these observations as possible for comparison and verification of statistical work in this same direction by many other persons in America and Europe.

In many of the final results of these twenty years data, it is interesting to find a general correspondence to the established data of more numerous measurements of the human body, and in the variation from authorities of large experience we find the differences as a whole in favor of the student. These results seem to show that we must expect different physical characteristics in those who pursue the scholarly life, from others whose occupations are unlike them in so many ways, and when properly understood and carried out we believe that the advantages will be found on the side of the scholarly life.

In the fall of 1861 I took measurement of all the college students in seven particulars, and have faithfully made these examinations of almost every sound man since connected with the college up to the present date. The measurements are made of the Freshmen soon after entering, and are repeated upon them near the end of each year 561

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