garments, or by the disastrous pressure of the clothes, which cannot be worn without tight ligatures, or by the mere want of use of the muscles of the body and limbs, owing to the hindrances to free motion these clothes offer,—diseases, I say, are almost entirely unknown here, and we read with astonishment of the multitude of doctors needed in every community of terrestrial mortals.
"And then, consider the expedients you are obliged to adopt on land to obviate the disadvantages under which you labour. When you wish to travel any distance, you must employ horses, carriages or steam-engines, and all this because the burden of your own weight is too great for you; and you must always take along with you great boxes full of clothes. For purposes of locomotion, your erect posture, whereby you have the use of only two limbs, puts you at a disadvantage compared with the lowest class of animals, which have all at least four limbs that they can use for progressive motion, and for supporting the weight of the body. On land, man is inferior, as regards his power of moving, to the horse, the dog, the deer, and even those contemptible animals the hare and the rabbit. These animals, too, have all a special covering of wool or hair that fits them for life in the air, and does not interfere with the play of their muscles or obstruct the action of their organs, like your artificial covering of clothes.
"On the other hand, in water man has no superior, nor even an equal among the lower animals, as far as locomotion is concerned. The long leverage of his arms and the powerful thrust of his legs enable him to excel the seal in speed as well as in all the subtler evolutions that he can perform in the water.
