one of our late battles,
told us that the dead weight of the helpless member seemed to drag him
down to the earth; he could hardly carry it; it "weighed a ton," to his
feeling, as he said.

In _ordinary walking_, a man's lower extremity swings essentially by its
own weight, requiring little muscular effort to help it. So heavy a body
easily overcomes all impedimenta from clothing, even in the sex least
favored in its costume. But if a man's legs are pendulums, then a short
man's legs will swing quicker than a tall man's, and he will take more
steps to a minute, other things being equal. Thus there is a natural
rhythm to a man's walk, depending on the length of his legs, which beat
more or less rapidly as they are longer or shorter, like metronomes
differently adjusted, or the pendulums of different time-keepers.
Commodore Nutt is to M. Bihin in this respect as a little, fast-ticking
mantel-clock is to an old-fashioned, solemn-clicking, upright
time-piece.

The mathematical formulae in which the Messrs. Weber embody their
results would hardly be instructive to most of our readers. The figures
of their Atlas would serve our purpose better, had we not the means of
coming nearer to the truth than even their careful studies enabled them
to do. We have selected a number of instantaneous stereoscopic views of
the streets and public places of Paris and of New York, each of them
showing numerous walking figures, among which some may be found in
every stage of the complex act we are studying. Mr. Darley has had the
kindness to leave his higher tasks to transfer several of these to our
pages, so that the reader may be sure that he looks upon an exact copy
of real human individuals in the act of walking.

[Illustration: Fig. 1.]

The first subject is caught with his legs stretched in a stride, the
remarkable length of which arrests our attention. The sole of the right
foot is almost vertical. By the action of the muscles of the calf it has
_rolled off_ from the ground like a portion of the tire of a wheel, the
heel rising first, and thus the body, already advancing with all its
acquired velocity, and inclined forward, has been pushed along, and, as
it were, _tipped over_, so as to fall upon the other foot, now ready to
receive its weight.

[Illustration: Fig. 2.]

In the second figure, the right leg is bending at the knee, so as to
lift the foot from the ground, in order that it may swing forward.

[Illustration: Fig. 3.]