The driving a hoop as high as the breast of the person who used it was formerly commended for rendering the limbs pliable, and strengthening the nerves. It was an ancient gymnastic exercise. Crico-aryt.enoidje'1 Musculi, (from a ring, a funnel, and forma ).

Muscles of the larynx, whose office is to open the glottis. They arise from the cricoid cartilage, and are inserted into the arytaenoid.

Crico arytaenoides laterales. They lie laterally upon the upper edge of the cricoid cartilage, and are inserted into the lower part of the side of the arytaenoid. They serve to dilate the glottis.

Crico arytaenoides postici. They lie upon the back part of the cricoid cartilage, and are inserted into that knob which stands on the back part of the basis of the arytaenoid cartilage, near the angle of the basis, one on each side. They open the larynx, and are called, by Casserius, par-cucuttare.

Crico pharyngaei. These muscles arise from the lower part of the side of the cricoid cartilage. They seem to be appendices of the thyro-pharyngaei, showing no other marks of distinction but their insertions, and a small difference in direction, because as they run backward they descend a little; for this reason, Winslow says he hath sometimes looked on them as one, and calls them thyrocrico-pharyngiti. The lowest of these muscular fibres, he says, makes a complete circle backwards, between the two sides of the basis of the carti-lago cricoides, which is the beginning of the oesophagus, and has been sometimes supposed to form a distinct muscle, called esophagus. There is another fasciculus of fibres occasionally detached from the thyro-pha-ryngaeus, and inserted laterally in the thyroid gland, for which reason I call it musculus thyro-adenoideus. Innes calls it the constrictor pharyngis inferior; and describes it as follows. It arises from the side of the thyroid cartilage, near the attachment of the sterno-hyoidaeus and thyro-hyoidaeus muscle, and from the cricoid cartilage, near the crico-thyrodaeus. This muscle is the largest of the three, and is inserted into the white line, where it joins with its fellow; the superior fibres running obliquely upwards, covering nearly one half of the middle constrictor, and terminating in a point; the inferior fibres run more transversely, and cover the beginning of the oesophagus. Their use is to compress that part of the pharynx which they cover, and to raise it with the larynx a little upwards. See Pharynx.

Crico thyroidae'i. Certain muscles of the larynx, which shut up the glottis. They rise from the anterior and lateral part of the cricoid, and are inserted into the lower edge of the thyroid cartilage. These are sometimes called crico-thyroidaei antici.