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practice the same habits. I think that we may venture to 
say that this will often happen in the case of the acrobat. 
Not only will the young children begin to mimic the 
actions of their parents, and play at being clowns and 
tumblers, after the manner of all children, but they will 
soon begin to be subjected to that severe discipline, at a 
very early age, which is necessary for supreme excellence 
in their calling. Assuming that this is so, what is the 
result ? Fortunately I am able to give a concrete instance 
by way of reply :— 
“ Hosono Kojiro (a Japanese acrobat) was thirty-two years of age, 
and was the eleventh descendant of a celebrated athlete who adopted 
the vocation of rope-dancing, balancing and vaulting, in the period 
when the mighty Taiko, or Hideyoshi, ruled Japan. He showed me 
the cherished book of his pedigree, and proudly asserted that only 
two others of his calling in all the Empire could point to so extended 
a line of acrobatic ancestry. He believed that a large portion of his 
skill had been transmitted from his progenitors, and I have no reason 
to doubt that the superiority of Japanese gymnasts to all others is, 
in fact, a matter of inheritance, since there are few among them 
whose professional lineage cannot be traced back at least a century. 
His offspring were born, as he had been, and his father before him, 
with physical peculiarities which made them in a measure exempt 
from rigorous training, and enabled them to enter upon their public 
career even in infancy without hardship or risk of injury. One of his 
sons, a sturdy youth of eleven, had been attached to a travelling band 
before the end of his third year. Another . . . had tumbled 
about the stage in the shape of a compact ball of flesh while yet 
incapable of walking steadily, or expressing in articulate speech his 
delight at his own precocious prowess. A third, still a baby at his 
mother’s breast, was held up before me in evidence of the extra 
ordinary flexibility and suppleness which the house of Hosono claimed 
as its birthright. The arms and legs of this atom of humanity were 
twisted and braided, and his whole body was rolled tightly together 
until he was twisted into a living hard knot, without causing him 
perceptible discomfort, or provoking the least murmur of dissatisfac 
tion.”—(E. H. House, formerly Professor of English Literature in the 
Royal College at Tokio. Manchester Weekly Times—Supplement. 
Feb. 8th, i8go.) 
In the above argument, I have assumed that the acrobat 
marries an acrobat ; but if this is not the case, it will be