finally settled that the active muscle does not use up more stuff than an idle one, but only disposes of it in a different way, then we shall have no right to recommend for labour an increase of food, with the view of supplying a supposed loss, which in reality is not suffered. Still less shall we be justified in doling out measures of meat and drink on the idea that so much extra diet is a fair equivalent for so much extra work. We shall have to look upon food not so much as a "charge" with which our muscles can be loaded, and which can be let off when occasion demands, but as something necessary to the well-being of the frame, as something which will run up and down the grooves of vital changes, whatever be the conduct of the body, which will suffer transformation and be finally unrolled into lifeless waste matters and living force, whether that force happen to be converted into mechanical effect or merely go out silently and unseen as heat and electricity. At the same time, an ample supply of food is not lost upon the economy, is not wasted even when no work can be shown for it. The greater

the amount of food, the greater is the mass of vital material generated, the wider and deeper are the vital changes, the higher is the working capacity of the vital machine, the more apt and ready is it to undergo toil. A rich diet is a necessary element of strength, though a full meal may not be a necessary condition of work.

We may now turn to the question-What quality of food is best suited for muscular strength? In what proportion ought the three great elements of every diet-starch, fat, and flesh-to be mingled in order to obtain a maximum of force? And here, again, we come upon a "fundamental want of bricks" to build with. We have spoken of muscles as the instruments of work, and of the consumption and transformations of muscular force; but are we sure that in the living body all the force that is put forth through the muscle really comes from the waste of muscular substance alone? Through every living muscle there is continually rushing a stream of blood, bringing up materials of food and carrying away materials of waste. May not some at least of that food, during its transit through the blood-vessels of the muscle, suffer change and give rise to force without really becoming part and parcel of the muscle? Because, if so, then we are utterly at a loss for a token whereby to judge of the relations between particular kinds of food and muscular force. Muscle we know we can determine by direct analysis, as well as by theoretical reasoning— whether such and such food helps the laying on of fleshy fibre; and hence, if muscle alone is concerned, we can form an estimate of the influence of that food on strength. But this ground is cut away from our feet when we admit that unknown constituents of the blood may share with the true muscular substance in the production of muscular force. That muscle, and muscle only, is concerned in the matter seems probable from the fact that a muscle wholly deprived of blood

is able to perform work, and therefore contains within itself all the elements necessary for the production of force. But we have as yet no certain demonstration that within the living body, in the usual course of things, no extraneous assistance is given to it.

If, again, taking muscle as the representative of muscular force, we attempt to pursue the various elements of food in their progress through the body, if we try to find out which becomes flesh, and therefore gives force, we soon find ourselves at a stand-still. We can follow the food into the blood, but no farther; when once it reaches that whirlpool it is lost to our view. We may adopt, as most straightforward and likely, the idea that the flesh (the proteine) of our food (whether of animal or vegetable origin) becomes the flesh of our bodies, but at present we cannot be sure of it. Of course the nitrogen of our flesh must come from the nitrogen of our food, but we do not know to what extent that nitrogen may in the mean time be bandied about in the economy. The acts of nature often seem to us pranks, when we do not see the meaning of them; and it is within the limits of possibility that the transformations of nutrition are far more complicated than we are at present inclined to think them. We know that flesh may split up into sugar or fat and something else, and it is just possible that sugar or fat has to join with something else in order that lifeless meat may become living flesh. If so, sugar or fat would have as much right to be considered a direct nurse of strength as the nitrogen-holder itself. Until these possibilities are settled, one way or the other, we cannot hope to deduce the action of the elements of food from their chemical nature.

If now we turn to the study of what are found to be the actual effects of food on the composition and powers of the vital machine, we shall meet with but little instruction touching muscular strength. We learn that such and such a diet is most conducive to health, that an excess of starchy or fatty food creates obesity, and the like. There is only one general law of nutrition that seems to offer a hint to him who seeks for muscular strength. The elaborate researches of the German physiologists have rendered it extremely probable that the amount and activity of the tissue-changes in the economy are directly dependent on the quantity of flesh or nitrogenous material that is taken as food. By the inordinate consumption of sugar or fat a man may make himself inordinately fat; but he cannot increase inordinately the bulk of his flesh by swallowing and digesting an inordinate quantity of meat. The chief effect of an increase of nitrogenous material as food is an increase in the chemical changes of the tissues, an increase in the vital consumption of bodily stuff, and a consequent

(1) The physiological virtues of nitrogen are most mysterious. Granted that the nitrogen-holders, the proteine-bodies, are the sole sources of muscular force, there still remains the fact that the force is only indirectly connected with their nitrogen. It is their carbon and hydrogen that suffer a force-developing oxidation, not their nitrogen.

increase in the quantity of waste products. Nitrogenous food seems at once to hurry on through its necessary transformations without showing any great desire to stay and swell out the bulk of the nitrogenous tissues. Since the muscles are the largest nitrogen shareholders in the body, we may infer that additional nitrogenous food means additional transformation of muscular substance, additional consumption and renewal of muscular material; and a rapid metamorphosis, a speedy undoing and remaking of flesh (provided that constructive changes are at least equal to destructive) is surely one element of muscular strength. It must be good for us that our muscles should be always just newly made; it must be of advantage that the body should be kept, as it were, in a state of masked activity, that the steam should be always up, not actually turned on, but ready at a moment's notice to be turned on for the production of movement. We may, moreover, fairly suppose such an activity to be beneficial to the other co-operative organs of the body as well as to the muscular machine itself. What is good for the muscles of the trunk and limbs will be good also for that muscular organ, the heart, and through the strengthening of the heart the whole of the body will be invigorated. Every organ, too, will be encouraged to a larger work by the stress thrown upon it; for the benefit of exercise is not confined to muscle only, but may be witnessed in every tissue or particle that has life.

We might, then, bid the athlete to eat as much meat as he can ; but we must at the same time warn him to beware of interfering with general health. Some part of him would suffer through a lack of starch and fat in the food, while, on the other hand, he might push forward his tissue-changes so far that the body would be unable to get rid of the accumulated waste products. In either case discomfort or distress would put a limit to his working power. He must be careful, even for the sake of his muscles, never to put in jeopardy the well-being of his body at large.

In fact, it is a very fair question for inquiry whether health is not after all the one sole condition of strength? Is there not for each man a certain harmony of his corporeal members essential to the due growth and full power of each member, whichever it may be, and reaching perfection only when each member is perfect too? Is there not a normal diet, the diet of true health, different for different men, but fixed for the same man, whatever be the use to which he put his body? To such a diet there would of course be the correlative task, the fixed amount of labour which a man must undergo as an element of health and strength quite as essential as food itself. On all these matters, crude, unlearned experience can never pass an unassailable judgment; the final appeal must be made to physiology. But at present, as we have seen, the voice of physiology, though it is often echoed very loudly, is only an uncertain sound.

M. FOSTER, JUN.

THE INSCRIPTION AT ANCYRA.1

ANCYRA, once a city of Phrygia, is situated near an insignificant stream, a supposed tributary of the Sangarius, renowned in the riversystem of Asia Minor, and doubly renowned in the perennial verse of the Iliad. This city, we are assured by the fable-loving Pausanias, was built by Midas, the son of Gordius-Midas of the fairy gold, the long ears, and the whispering reed, and Gordius of the insoluble knot, which the Macedonian hero so ingeniously untied. When Pausanias wrote, the anchor which the founder of Ancyra had discovered, and which suggested a name for the city, was still to be seen in the temple of Jupiter. There was also visible in those days a fountain called the Fountain of Midas, and reported to be the identical fountain into which the royal son of the insoluble knot maker poured the tempting wine intended to facilitate the capture of the sly Silenus. For it was a curious characteristic of the Greek wizard that, although when sober and awake he could easily elude his inquisitive pursuers, yet if drunk and caught napping he might be made to sing and prophesy at pleasure, hopelessly entangled in the flowery garlands which orthodox prescription held indispensable to his capture. The anchor discovered by Midas at Ancyra is doubtless a purely mythical anchor, and owes its raison d'être to a fancied necessity for explaining the origin of the city's name. In a slightly altered form the legendary appellation still survives, and the Angora goat, with its silky hair, serves both as literal and symbolical connecting link between our commercial present, with its steam carriage and metal horse, and the fabulous past, with the ox-drawn chariot of the peasant king, his prophetic eagle and inextricable knot, so skilfully disposed of by Alexander's sword.

Ancyra, however, has a real as well as legendary history. Nearly three centuries before the Christian era the Kelts or Gauls, terrified by the earthquake, tempest, and lightning which followed their attack on the favourite sanctuary of Apollo, and flying before the celestial champions and mortal allies of the radiant god, unwillingly relinquished the gilded statues that as they gleamed along the terraces of Delphi showed like solid gold to the eyes of the covetous marauders, to find a home on the Danube, win a kingdom in Thrace, or enjoy the pay and plunder of a Bithynian prince. The Tectosages, one of the three great divisions of the extensive confederation, succeeded in acquiring possession of Ancyra. Attalus, the spirited ruler of the little state of Pergamum, was the first who refused to pay the tribute exacted by the invaders. The refusal was supported by a battle. (1) RES GESTE DIVI AUGUSTI EX MONUMENTIS ANCYRANO ET APOLLONIENSI. Edidit Th. Mommsen. Accedunt Tabulæ tres. Berolini, 1865.

Proving victorious in the field, Attalus resolved to confine these brigand immigrants to the region which, borrowing a name from its new proprietors, was afterwards known as Galatia. At a somewhat later period Cnous Manlius, the Roman consul, completed the humiliation of the Gauls. Triumphing over the Trocmi and Telesboi, Manlius marched on to Ancyra, and about ten miles from that place carried the strong position of the Tectosages. After this, we hear little more of the City of the Anchor. Only we learn from Pausanias that the descendants of the Pergamenians, who expelled its foreign masters, used to display the spoils they had taken from the Gauls, and exhibit pictures delineating scenes suggested by their common history. On the death of the tributary king, Amyntas, B.C. 25, Galatia became a Roman province, and Ancyra, in the reign. of the adopted son of Julius, was complimented with the title of Sebaste, with the added appellative Tectosagum, to distinguish it from two other cities of Galatia, Pessinus and Tavium, also called after Augustus. Of this new province Ancyra was the metropolis.

Commanding the road from Byzantium to Tavium and Armenia as well as that from Byzantium to Syria, Ancyra was celebrated as an emporium of traffic. The civilisation of Greece naturally left its impress there. When Hamilton visited it in 1836 he discovered numerous evidences of the former presence of Hellenic art in “ portions of bas-reliefs, funeral cippi with garlands, the caput bovis, caryatides, columns and fragments of architraves, with parts of dedicatory inscriptions resembling the walls of a rich museum.'

That

Glorified by legendary and historic association, renowned for commerce, attractive through picturesque ruins, Ancyra has no interest so profound as that which attaches to one grand memorial of the past, an imperfect inscription. In the temple consecrated to the god Augustus and the goddess Rome, erected perhaps in the reign of Tiberius, is a ruined wall, and on this wall engraved in the two classical languages of antiquity, may be read one of the most interesting documents which the old world has bequeathed to the new. wall glorious in its decay, that wall in which "the angles of almost every stone have been crushed, and the cracks radiating in all directions have caused the outer surface of the marble to exfoliate," has faithfully transmitted to the present age the invaluable deposit given into its keeping more than eighteen hundred years ago. the inside of the Ante or portico-pillars of the temple may be traced a Latin inscription. On the outer wall of the cella or interior of the temple, a Greek translation confirms or supplements the Latin original. This memorial of antiquity, preserved in the two ruling languages of the past, has long been known to scholars as the Monumentum Ancyranum. The inscription exhibits a succinct but imposing recital of the actions of Augustus, drawn up with all the authority of his name,

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