Pages from an old volume of life ; a collection of essays, 1857-1881 . Fig the patient walks, is one of the characteristic marks ofimperfect muscular action. Walking, then, is a perpetual falling with a perpet-ual self-recovery. It is a most complex, violent, andperilous operation, which we divest of its extreme dan-ger only by continual practice from a very early pe-riod of life. We find how complex it is when weattempt to analyze it, and we see that we never under-stood it thorougiily until the time of the instantaneous 128 PAGES FKOM AN OLD VOLUME OF LIFE. photograph. We learn how violent i
Pages from an old volume of life ; a collection of essays, 1857-1881 . Fig the patient walks, is one of the characteristic marks ofimperfect muscular action. Walking, then, is a perpetual falling with a perpet-ual self-recovery. It is a most complex, violent, andperilous operation, which we divest of its extreme dan-ger only by continual practice from a very early pe-riod of life. We find how complex it is when weattempt to analyze it, and we see that we never under-stood it thorougiily until the time of the instantaneous 128 PAGES FKOM AN OLD VOLUME OF LIFE. photograph. We learn how violent it is, when wewalk against a post or a door in the dark. We discoverhow dangerous it is, when we slip or trip and comedown, perhaps breaking or dislocating our limbs, oroverlook the last step of a flight of stairs, and discoverwith what headlong violence we have been hurlingourselves forward. Two curious facts are easily proved. First, a manis shorter when he is walking than when at rest. We. Fig. 4. have found a very simple way of showing this by hav-ing a rod or yardstick placed horizontally, so as totouch the top of the head forcibly, as we stand underit. In walking rapidly beneath it, even if the eyes areshut, to avoid involuntary stooping, the top of thehead will not even graze the rod. The other fact is,that one side of a man always tends to outwalk theother side, so that no j^erson can walk far in a straightline, if he is blindfolded. THE PHYSIOLOGY OF WALKING. 129 The somewhat singular illustration at the head ofour article carries out an idea which has only been par-tially alluded to by others. Man is a loheel^ with twospokes, his legs, and two fragments of a tire, his rolls successively on each of these fragments fromthe heel to the toe. If he had spokes enough, he wouldgo round and round as the boys do when they makea wheel with their four limbs for its spokes. Buthaving only two available for ordinary locomotion,each of these has to be taken up as soon
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