Leaping is, properly speaking, nothing but a step of running taken singly. A man can jump with his feet joined, that is to say, the two feet quit the ground at the same instant, and the body is thrown vertically upward and forward, or backward. The jump may be preceded by running several steps in order to get under way, as it is termed. In this case the speed acquired during the first steps is added to the impulse given to the body by the last one. By exercise men have succeeded in jumping vertically a height of two metres, and horizontally over a space of five or six metres. Amoros speaks of an Englishman who jumped across a ditch ten metres in width.