AUSTRALIAN YOUTH.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LVII, Issue 8779, 10 June 1907, Page 6

AUSTRALIAN YOUTH.

Unfavourable Comparison

Lecturing at the Royal Society's rooms. Dγ "Mardeu, president of the Presbyterian Ladies' College, Croydon, Sydney, on 7th May, brought forward "a mass of facts and figures to prove that, taking as significant such considerations as weight, girth, and lung capacity, and height, the Australian boy and girl compared unfavourably with those of older countries, instancing Sweden, England and America.

The cephalic index, lie said, was an important point. With Australian girls the dullest period was that between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, when the cephalic index was lowest. At this stage nature was exerting her activities in- other directions. Yet this was precisely the time at which the greatest educational pressure was put upon the girl both' by the schoolmistress and the University competitive examinations. The general conclusions to be deduced from" these data were of vital importance. Nature insisted that physical improvement must precede mental development. He advocated plenty of parks, not places planted with trees, but clear, opec spaces of turf, where children might run about freely. Adults should only be admitted under strict regulations! Walking was the best adult exercise. Hockey was said to be bad for girls; swimming was good, but exhaustiug; tennis did not make the player sufficiently breathless ; basketball and baseball, played purely as games, did the greatest good." But play should be play. Irresponsible exercise was play, while irresponsible muscular exercise was work. It was pathetic to see the youug woman of to-day with no games but tennis, never becoming breathless or covered with perspiration. She was laying up for herself a heavy crop of troubles in middle aye. He supposed it would be heresy to touch the subject of competitive examinations. But at iv period when the organism was engaged iv producing growth it was perilous to impose mental strain. Discussion followed, Dr Chishohn Ross warning his hearers against the danger of exaggerating such injunction as that of breathlessness. From a medical point of view, he said, when breathing was too violent for the nostrils, and the mouth had to be used, the exercise had gone too far.