Eggs, when not hard-boiled, are both light and wholesome, but to take them upon the top of a heavy meal of other things is usually a mistake, and leads to the usual result of over-feeding - biliousness.

The most rigid of the trainers of the present day give chops or steaks and eggs for breakfast; beef or mutton again, with watercress, etc, and vegetables for lunch; and beef or mutton again in the evening, together with stewed fruit or rhubarb, and blancmange or rice-pudding. This is a good sample of diet, we have no doubt; but variety is pleasing, and as soon as any food, however healthy, begins to pall, it should be changed for something which, although less digestible, will please, and therefore reinvigorate the trainee.

As regards eatables, ordinary common sense can tell a man that heavy pastry, or 'stodgy' sweet puddings, or highly spiced dishes, are not healthy food, and that the less that is taken of them the better for the athlete; but, at the same time, one requisite for a healthy diet is that a man should like it. Porridge makes an admirable dish for breakfast, but not to a man who doesn't like it. Pepper and mustard may possibly be deleterious (as we have heard) to the coats of the stomach, and tea without sugar may possibly be healthier than tea with sugar; but if a man dislikes his beef without mustard, or his tea without sugar, he had much better use these condiments than go without them, and he will do well to have kidneys and bacon (which after all are not poisonous) for breakfast, rather than to force down his throat the admirable porridge which he may not happen to like. Nothing which is unpalatable should be eaten as a duty.

Another point to which an athlete in training should attend is the quantity of his food. The youthful aspirant to athletic honours usually begins by gorging himself, thus falling a victim to the same old error that for feats of strength the one thing needful is to eat strengthening food. The old system, as we have before said, was applied chiefly to pugilists of the lower classes, who, when not in training, probably got less and worse food than they really required; accordingly it suited them to eat more when they went into training. At the present day the well-to-do classes, with their three meat meals a day, eat more than they need. Doubtless their natural powers of digestion increase when they begin to take the increased amount of exercise which training for a race involves; but if, as soon as fresh air and exercise increase their digestive powers, they immediately increase the amount of food they take, they will end their training as they began it - short-winded and overfed. In this, as in other matters of diet, it is difficult to give exact advice, but our strongly expressed opinion is that it is better to run the risk of eating too little in training than to run the risk of eating too much.

A strong and healthy man may easily weaken himself by over-feeding, but he will not be at all likely to reduce his strength by taking less food than he absolutely requires.

Many men in training have their chief meal in the middle of the day, and a great many doctors recommend this as more healthy, saying that the digestion is stronger in the earlier part of the day, and that when the body is jaded after the day's work it is not fair to put a strain upon the digestion in its weakened state. Whether this view be right we do not pretend to say, and content ourselves with offering the practical advice that the athlete should dine at that hour when he feels most hungry. Men who are accustomed to dine in the evening may, we think, advantageously stick to their old practice when in training, and take their chief meal after their day's work. 01 one thing only we feel convinced, that a man in training unless his consumptive powers be as abnormal as those of Milo of Crotona) does not want a heavy lunch and a heavy dinner as well. If he dine in the middle of the day, his breakfast and supper should be lighter in proportion, and if he dine late he will want only a light lunch of a chop, or a plate of cold beef and vegetables, with little or nothing else.

On the whole we prefer the system of a good breakfast, light lunch, and a moderate dinner after the day's work.

Of recent years trainers of crews or athletes have come round to a sensible view of what should be eaten. In our opinion, however, their views on the question of what should be drunk are not equally sound. For one thing it is obviously unreasonable to prescribe exactly the same amount of liquid for a small man and a big man, and to say that this quantity, and no more, must be taken whatever the amount of the day's work has been, and whether the day has been cold or warm. Yet this is a course which we have constantly seen adopted. The old theory was, as we have said, that a man, to get down his weight and make his body hard, should take the smallest quantity of liquid that he could possibly get on with. That theory is practically extinct, but it has left its legacy behind in the fixed notion of the trainer that there must be a definite amount of liquid fixed for each man and each meal. In speaking on this point we necessarily have to follow the same line of argument which we have adopted with regard to eating. It stands to reason that a man taking violent exercise and perspiring freely requires more liquid than he does during his ordinary life.

But - and it is a very important 'but' - the majority of men drink a great deal more than they want, by which we do not mean that they take too much alcoholic stimulant, but that they take too much liquid, to the great harm of their digestions; and in this kind of over-drinking we believe teetotallers are the worst offenders. It is also a well-known fact that taking too much liquid does more to make the body fat and heavy than taking too much solid food. The conclusion we arrive at is, therefore, that a man who goes into training needs more drink than he does at other times, but should take less than he is in the habit of taking, unless he is more temperate than the majority of his fellow-creatures are. The athlete in training should never drink between meals unless he is absolutely thirsty, in which case he should drink to assuage his thirst and not for enjoyment; and at meal times he should drink as much as he reasonably feels a craving for. If the drink be unnaturally stinted, the man will soon break down, his skin will get unhealthy, and his sleep and digestion will be impaired.