Terrestrial - earthly; belonging to the earth.
Endowment - a gift of nature; any gift, quality, or faculty.
Accountable - liable to be called to account by a superior.
Inhospitable - unkind ; affording no shelter or subsistence.
Scientific - well versed in exact knowledge.
Finns and Lapps - natives of Finland and Lapland.
Aborigines - The first People of a country.
Mongolian - the country of Mongolia is in the interior Asia.
Degree - 1-360th part of the circumference of a circle.
Progenitor - one who has lived before, a forefather.
Kalmucs - tribes occupying the South-Eastern plains of Russia.

MAN differs from all other terrestrial creatures by the endowment of REASON. His reason enables him to understand the propriety or impropriety of his notions; and as reason is always accompanied with the faculty of choosing or determining, called the WILL, his possession of reason makes him an accountab1e being.

But although the Reason of man raises him above all other terrestrial beings, he is not in all respects superior to the creatures around him. Thus he is not so long-lived as the oak, nor so terrible as the lion, nor so warmly clad as the sheep. His reason enables him to supply his defects in some of these particulars; he can thus live in a greater diversity of climates, and can procure feed and clothing where the inferior creatures would perish.

The race of man is diffused ever the surface of the earth as far as vegetable life extends. Wherever the earth affords sustenance for human beings and other animals, man is found, densely covering some of the more favoured climates, but thinly scattered in the inhospitable regions.

EUROPE counts eighty-nine inhabitants to the square mile. ASIA, thirty-two, and AFRICA fourteen, while AMERICA has only four. The human population of the globe is commonly estimated at 900,000,000, but scientific men consider this estimate to be too high.

Nations and tribes differ in their outward appearance, in language, in character, and in religion. Some of them are but little superior in their habits of life to the animals of the deserts and forests, other nations arc partly civilized, and others are in a high moral and intellectual condition.

It has been usual to admit, with Linnaeus, of five races of men ; the simple arrangement of Cuvier is, however, preferable, who proposes three races only, viz., the Caucasian, or bearded type, (so called from Mount Caucasus) the Mongolian, or beardless type, and the woolly-haired, or Negro type.

[FIG 1. Caucasian. FIG 2. Mongolian. FIG 3. Negro.]

The Europeans, with the exception of the Finns, and Lapps, may be considered as representing the first of these races; the Tartars, Chinese, and other inhabitants of NORTHERN ASIA, the native tribes of AMERICA, and the Aborigines of AUSTRALIA, the second; and the negroes of AFRICA the third.

The Caucasian race is for the most part white, but it includes tribes of almost every shade towards blackness. The Mongolian race is of all shades of yellow, seldom passing into white on the one hand, or black on the other. The Negro race is always dark-coloured, but generally black.

The form and proportions of the human skull exhibit a marked difference in these three races. If two lines are drawn, one from the passage of the ear to the base of the nose, and the other slanting from the forehead to the most prominent part of the jaw-bone, the figure called the facial angle will be shown; this angle is thought to afford a measure of the capacity of the fore-part of the skull, and of the size of the corresponding portion of the brain. In European skulls this angle was found to be one of 80 degrees, in a Mongolian skull 75, and in that of a Negro only 70.

[FIG 4. Caucasian. FIG 5. Mongolian. FIG 6. Negro.]

These three principal varieties of mankind - and the most scientific inquirers declare themselves satisfied with this number - were descended, it has been supposed, from the three sons of Noah; Shem being the progenitor of the Caucasian tribes, such as the Jews and the modern nations of Europe; Japheth of the Mongolian, such as the Chinese, Kalmucs &c.; and Ham of the Negroes.

Whatever differences appear in the several races of mankind, they have still more in common with each other, there is the same susceptibility of improvement; admitting of the cultivation of their common endowments, the same inward and mental nature, and the same adaptability to the institutions of civilized life and to the refining influences of religion; while all possess the remarkable gift of speech. It may therefore be concluded that God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the earth - Acts xvii. 26.

Skeleton - the framework of an animal body.
Complicated - knit or twisted together, combination of different things or parts.
Ligament - a fibrous structure connecting bones.
Muscle - an organ of motion; flesh.
nervous system - the brain, spinal cord, and all their connecting filaments.
Deranged - disturbed; thrown into disorder.
Simultaneous - at the same time.
Mechanism - any contrivance or arrangement producing motion.
Horizontal - parallel to the horizon, or surface boundary of the earth.
Vertebral - belonging to a bone of the spine.

The skeleton of the human body comprehends three principal divisions - the head, the trunk, and the limbs. The bones which form this framework are 255 in number, including the teeth ; and they are united in such a manner as to combine strength with freedom of motion.

Of this complicated structure of bones - of the ligaments which hold them together - of the muscles which cover them - of the joints which, with the muscles, serve for motion - of the vessels which supply every part of the body with blood - of the organs which act on the food - of the senses which convey knowledge to the mind - and of the nervous system which pervades the entire body, and presides over its sensations and its actions, we shall speak in the succeeding pages.

The simultaneous and unceasing operations which are going on within our bodily frame every moment of our existence, and which cannot be stopped without a fatal result, nor even deranged without discomfort, tell us that we are fearfully and wonderfully made while they should at the same time excite in us the desire to become acquainted with the exquisite skill evinced in its mechanism, to ascertain how it is that the various parts are held together in constant motion for sixty or seventy years, without wearing out; how waste is supplied ; how substance is restored; and how action, which destroys most material things, only strengthens and replenishes the parts of the living body, for so long a time.

[FIG 7. The Human Skeleton.]

Our animal frame is capable of enduring for more than one hundred years. Few people arrive at this age, but some even pass this extended boundary. During the whole of this period, it is suffering continual waste; and the common calculation has been, that in seven years every particle of its substance is entirely new. The old materials waste away or are rubbed off, and are replaced by others.

Without entering into the curious and complicated process by which these changes are effected, we have here a fact, which proves the superiority of the animal structure above every other. We have an evidence of skill and design, which no human ingenuity has been able to reach, - a machine renovating itself, and capable of repairing its own waste for a length of time.

The erect attitude of man distinguishes him from all other animals. In those animals which sometimes affect the erect position, the head is placed much farther back than in man; these animals can therefore adopt either the upright or the horizontal position. It is not so with man ; his neck has not the powerful muscles and ligaments by which the large heads of quadrupeds are sustained, and if he were to move on all-fours, instead of commanding the horizon as he does at present, - and as most quadrupeds do, - his face would be directed to the ground. There would also be much danger in this position, from the continual flow of blood to the brain; while the conformation of his foot, and of his hand show that he was never destined for such a mode of progression.

The skull of man surmounts his bodily fabric; it is formed of bones so arranged as to give the greatest possible strength with the greatest possible lightness ; the interior of the skull is completely filled with brain, with which all the senses are intimately connected ; from the brain, and the spinal cord, which is lodged within the vertebral column, (Cut 14.) the nerves proceed which are distributed to all parts of the body, endowing it with sensation and voluntary motion.

The highest view that we can take of man, is that which looks upon him as belonging to a spiritual as well as a material world. "The end of the creation of the earth, says Linnaeus, is the glory of God from the works of nature by man only." And the same pious author observes, How contemptible is man, if he does not aim at this end of his creation, if he does not strive to raise himself above the low pursuits that usually occupy his mind!

The beasts of the field honour him, and all creatures that he bath made glorify him. But man must study the book open before him and the more he studies it, the more audible to him will be the general voice to his spiritual ear, and he will clearly perceive, that every created thing glorifies God in its place by fulfilling his will, and the great purpose of his providence ; but that he himself alone can give a tongue to every creature and pronounce for all a general doxology.

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handy work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. (Psalm xix. 1, 2.)

Optical - relating to sight.
Diagram - a figure or plan for explaining the form or action of a thing.
Membrane - a thin expanded skin or tissue.
Sclerotic - hard; the thick outer coat of the eye.
Choroid - a coat of the eye.
Retina - one of the coats of the eye, forming a fine network.
Vitreous - resembling glass.
Aqueous - watery.
Crystallline - clear, transparent.
Iris - the coloured circle round the pupil of the eye.
Concha - the hollow part of the outward ear.
Tympanum - the middle cavity of the ear.
Labyrinth - the internal ear.
Mastication - the act of chewing.
articulate sounds - distinct sounds, as of words, formed by the organs of speech.
Papillae - minute elevations on the skin.
Emanation - that which issues from a substance.
Olfactory - relating to the sense of smelling.
Incisors - the fore-teeth which cut the food.
Canine - applied to the eye teeth which are like a dog's.
Carnivorous - feeding on animal food.
Molar - grinding; applied to the largo double teeth, which grind the food.

IT is a common and correct remark that two individuals are hardly to be met with possessing exactly the same features; this variety has long been a matter of observation. The three principal races of mankind have peculiar and strongly marked characteristics of the face and head, and sufficient similarity to enable us to decide to which variety each belongs.

The eye in man and the higher animals is an optical instrument of wonderful completeness, designed to form an exact picture of surrounding objects upon the optic nerve, or nerve of sight, by which the impression is conveyed to the brain.

[FIG 8. The Eyeball. A. The Coverings. B. The Cornea. C. The Optic Nerve.]

The principal parts of the eye are shown in the annexed diagrams - they consist of the three membranes or coverings of the eyeball, A - the sclerotic, choroid, and retina; B, the cornea, which projects in front of the iris and pupil, shaped like a watch-glass, and C, the optic nerve, contained in a tube, and leading to the brain. Within the eye-ball are the three transparent fluids, called the vitreous and aqueous humours, and the crystalline lens.

The outward parts of the eyeball, (Cut 9.) are the pupil, A ; the iris, B ,and that part of the sclerotic coat called the white of the eye. By the contraction and relaxation of certain fibres in the iris, the size of the pupil is changed according to the degree of light to which the eye is exposed; the pupil being made to contract in a strong light, in such a manner as to exclude superfluous rays, and to dilate in a faint light, so as to admit as many rays as possible.

[FIG 9. The Outward Parts of the Eye.]

The alteration in the size of the pupil in accordance with the degree of light may be easily observed, by stationing one's self at a window provided with shutters, and holding a looking-glass in one's hand. If the light be at first strong, the pupil will be seen in a contracted state but if the shutters be gradually closed, so as to diminish the amount of light, the pupil will be seen to enlarge, and it will diminish again when the shutters are re-opened.

The sense of hearing acquaints us with the sounds produced by bodies in a state of vibration; the vibrations cause the air to undulate and spread more widely as the distance from the sounding body is increased; this is the reason why sound becomes less intense as the sounding body is more distant.

The three main parts of the organ of hearing are the concha, or hollow part of the outward ear, the tympanum, and the labyrinth. By means of three little bones, the incus, the malleus, and the stapes, situated in the cavity of the tympanum, sound vibrations are conveyed to the labyrinth.

[FIG 10. External and Internal Parts of the Ear.
A. The concha.
B. The malleus or hammer.
C. The incus, or anvil.
D. The Tympanum.
E. The stapes or stirrup bone.
F. The labyrinth.
G. The auditory nerve.
H. The Eustachian tube.]

The organs of taste have their principal seat in the tongue, but other parts of the mouth also receive the impression of certain savours. They have for their chief purpose, the directing of animals in the choice of food, in which they are often aided by those of smell.

The tongue is a muscular substance which accomplishes the varied movements, that are required in the acts of mastication, and in the production of articulate sounds. It is covered with papillae (Cut 39.) which are excited and rise upon its surface when called into action by the contact of substances having a pleasant savour, producing a moistness over its surface.

Odours excite peculiar sensations in the organ of smell, which cannot be perceived by any other organs; they proceed from emanations in the air. It is probable that odours are very finely divided particles of the odoriferous substance, and that these particles come into actual contact with the membrane on which the olfactory nerve is spread out. Hence the sense of smell can only be possessed with considerable acuteness by the air-breathing animals. By the situation of this organ at the commencement of the respiratory passages we are warned of noxious effluvia and prevented from receiving them into the lungs.

[FIG 11. Incisor. FIG 12. Canine. FIG 13. Molar.]

In man there are three kinds of teeth; the first have a thin cutting edge to divide the food, they are called incisors. Others called canine teeth have a more conical form, and are very strong, they are used to reduce the food into smaller particles; in the carnivorous animals the canine teeth are used to tear the food, they are more elevated and pointed than their other teeth; but in man they do not exceed the level of the others and are unsuited to the purposes which such teeth serve in other animals.

The third kind of teeth have an irregular flattened surface, and are adapted to bruise or grind the food; they are called molar, or mill-like teeth ; the incisors have a single fang; the canine teeth penetrate the jaw more deeply than the incisors, and the molar teeth, which require great firmness, have two or three fangs spread out from each other within the jaw.

Spine - the vertebral column, or backbone.
Flexibility - the quality which admits of being bent.
Curvature - bending in a regular form.
Pyramidal - shaped like a pyramid.
Vertebra - a bone of the spine.
Superincumbent - lying above.
Articulation - connection by joints.
Contiguous - touching, adjoining.
Junction - a joining place, point of union.
Tendon - the fibrous structure which connects a muscle with a bone.
Lateral - placed beside.
Flexion - bending; the flexor muscles bend the limbs.
Extension - a stretching out.
Interstice - a small space between the parts which compose a body.
Cartilage - smooth, solid animal matter, softer than bone, & harder than ligament. It forms the nidus (or nest), in which the earthy matter of bones a deposited.

The spine or back-bone is the great centre of the bodily structure; it combines great strength with great flexibility; it sustains the erect position of the body, while it allows of the bending of the trunk to any curvature that man may require.

The pyramidal form of this natural column is obviously conducive to strength and the arrangement of the solid matter of which it is composed, contributes to the same effect for, instead of being collected into one compact mass, it is diffused in such a manner as to resemble the structure of a sponge; and the same quantity of matter being given in each, and their height being the same, hollow columns are stronger than solid ones.

[FIG 14. The Spine. FIG 15. A Vertebra.]

Again, the whole column is made up of numerous parts called vertebrae, which are so firmly bound together, as to lessen the chance of being broken in the act of bending; and these vertebrae being applied to each other, throughout, by broad horizontal surfaces, are thus best calculated to support the perpendicular pressure of the superincumbent parts.

The effect of general strength is farther accomplished by the mutual locking in of the projecting portions, or processes, of the several vertebrae; and the same effect is accomplished to an additional extent among those vertebrae which belong to the thorax or chest, by the mode of articulation between them and the ribs; each rib being united, not entirely to a single vertebra, but partially to two contiguous vertebrae, near their line of junction.

The flexibility of the spine is secured to the utmost requisite extent, by the great number of articulations or joints which it possesses, amounting to more than twenty, as well as by the elasticity of the substance constituting those joints.

The projecting parts or processes of the several vertebrae, serve for the insertion of the muscles and tendons which are to move the whole, and are differently disposed in the neck, the back, and the joints; so as to be accommodated to the degree and kind of motion required in each; thus the vertebrae of the neck admit of a lateral motion to a greater extent than those of the back; and the vertebrae of the back admit of flexion and extension to a greater degree than those of the neck; while the vertebrae of the loins, being intended for support rather than flexibility, have their processes so distributed, as to contribute principally to the former of these effects.

At each interstice between the bones of the spine there is a peculiar gristly substance which is squeezed out from betwixt the bones, and, therefore permits them to approach and play a little with the motions of the body. This gristly substance is enclosed in an elastic binding, or membrane, of great strength, which passes from the edge or border of one vertebra to the border of the one next it.

When a weight is upon the body, the soft gristle is pressed out, and the membrane yields; the moment the weight is removed, the membranes recoil by their elasticity, the gristle is pressed into its place, and the bones resume their position. We can readily understand how great the influence of these twenty-four joinings must be in giving elasticity to the whole column.

The canal for the spinal cord runs through the bones of the spinal columns; the spinal cord itself is continuous with the brain; and a considerable part of the spinal cord consists of nervous fibres issuing from the brain to be distributed to the several parts of the body ; the upper part of the spinal cord is connected with the nerves of respiration, mastication, and deglutition; the lower part sends nerves to the limbs and trunk.

The ribs are attached to the spinal column, twelve on each side. The cartilages of the first seven ribs, which are termed the true ribs, are united to the breast-bone. Those of the five lower ribs are not thus united, and are hence called false ribs.

The scapula or shoulder-blade is a large flat bone which occupies the upper part of the back on each side, it is somewhat triangular in form ; at its upper extremity is a circular cavity which receives the head of the arm-bone. The muscles attached to the scapula are chiefly those which draw the arm upwards. The clavicle or collar-bone extends from the shoulder-blade to the breast-bone; its principal use is to keep the shoulders apart.

The upper part of the trunk is the thorax or chest, it consists partly of muscles and partly of bones in nearly equal proportions. Both together form the walls of a cavity in which are placed the organs of circulation and respiration.

At the front of the chest is the sternum or breast-bone, behind it is the spinal column, and at the sides are the ribs. The lower part of the trunk comprises the abdomen and the pelvis. (Cut 20.)

Locomotion - motion from place to place.
Cylindrical - of the form of a roller.
Radius - the outer bone of the fore-arm.
Ulna - the inner bone of the fore-arm which forms part of the elbow-joint.
Parallel - lying side by side, equally distant throughout..
Intellectual - belonging to the mind or understanding.
Spherical - shaped like a ball.

[FIG 16. Hand of Monkey.]
[FIG 17. Radius and Ulna.]

Of the four extremities of Man, one pair is adapted for support and the other for grasping. Although monkeys have hands yet they are so imperfect as to serve chiefly for clinging and climbing, they cannot take up any small object between the thumb and finger.

The hand of man is seldom employed to assist him in his locomotion, except in swimming, where it answers the purpose of a fin; and in climbing, where it both grasps and supports ; but neither of these movements is natural to man.

Each of the upper limbs consists of the arm, the fore-arm, and the hand; the arm is a single, long, cylindrical bone called the humerus, which has a large rounded head, fitting into a cavity of the scapula ; at the other end it assists in forming the hinge-joint of the elbow. The chief muscles employed in the movement of the arm are situated at the fleshy part of the chest, near the spinal column, and on the top of the shoulder.

In the fore-arm there are two long bones called the radius and the ulna; they lie nearly parallel to each other, and are connected by ligaments at their extremities; they possess great freedom of motion. The movements of the hand upon the radius render it capable of a great variety of uses, to which it could not otherwise be applied.

The muscles by which the fore-arm is moved are situated chiefly in the arm, those which move the hand are situated in the forearm, and the muscles which move the fingers are situated in the hand.

To man, the only animal that partakes of Divine intelligence, the Creator has given, in lieu of every other natural weapon or organ of defence, the hand; an instrument applicable to every art and occasion, as well of peace as of war.

Man therefore wants neither a hoof, nor a horn, nor any other natural weapon; inasmuch as he is able with his hand to grasp a much more effective weapon, the rifle, sword, or spear. Besides winch, natural weapons can only be employed in close conflict; while some of the weapons employed by man, as javelins, arrows, and the rifle are even more effective at a distance.

And, again, though man may be inferior to the lion in swiftness, yet by his dexterity and skill he breaks into his use a still swifter animal, the horse mounted upon whose back he can escape from or pursue the lion, or attack him at great advantage.

With the hand man weaves the garment that protects him from the summer's heat, or winter's cold; with this he forms the various furniture of nets and snares which give him dominion over the inhabitants as well of the water as of the air and earth; and the numerous implements employed in the various arts of life; lastly, by means of the same instrument, he bequeaths to posterity, in writing, the intellectual treasures of his imagination and hence, we who are living at this day, are enabled to hold converse with the venerable sages of antiquity.

The hand possesses the power of grasping; it readily applies itself to, and securely holds, bodies of every form and size that are capable of being moved by human strength. It is framed in the manner most convenient for laying a firm hold on objects both greater and less than itself. And in order to enable it to apply itself to objects of various shapes, it is divided into many parts, and it seems to be better constituted for this purpose than any similar instrument; for it not only can apply itself to substances of a spherical form, so as to touch them with every part of itself, but it also can securely hold substances of a plane or of a concave surface; and consequently it can hold substances of any form.

[FIG 18. Hand of Man.]
[FIG 19. Bones of the Hand.]

We take up the smallest things with the tips of the fingers; those which are a little larger we take up with the same fingers, but not with their tips ; substances still larger we take up with three fingers, with four, and so on, all which we could not do were not the hand divided as it is. And suppose the thumb were not placed as it is, in opposition to the other four fingers, but that all the five were in the same line, they would be comparatively useless, but the thumb is so placed and has exactly such a degree and kind of motion, as to be easily made to co-operate with the four fingers.

The fingers arc capable of holding soft substances simply by the fleshy or soft part of their extremity ; but they could not hold hard substances without the assistance of the nails; deprived of the support of which, the flesh would be forced out of its position. On the other hand we could not lay hold of the hard substances by means of the nails alone; for these being themselves hard, would easily slip from contact with hard bodies.

Thus then the soft flesh at the tips of the fingers compensating for the unyielding nature of the nails, and the nails giving support to the yielding softness of the flesh, the fingers are rendered capable of holding substances that are both small and hard.

Femur - the thigh bone.
Pelvis - the cavity formed by the meeting of the bone, in the lower part of the abdomen.
Condyle - a round projection at the end of a bone.
Concavity - a hollow depression.
Tibia - the largest bone of the leg.
Fibula - the outer or small bone of the leg; so named because it connects and gives firmness to the other parts.
Articulating - joining or junction of the bones.
Mobility - moveableness, capability of motion.

The erect position of man - the weight to be sustained, namely, of the trunk, the upper extremities, and the head, - and the necessity for locomotion in the erect position, require that the lower limbs should be different in form, in size, and in arrangement to any that are found in other animals. The formation of the thigh, the leg, and the foot is well adapted to supply strength and speed.

The thigh-bone called the femur joins the pelvis at its upper extremity, and the leg-bones at the knee ; at these extremities the femur is light, porous, and spongy. (Cut 28.) It is connected by means of the pelvis with the spine; its upper extremity has a large ball or head fitting into a concave socket in the pelvis. Its lower extremity has two large rounded smooth projections called condyles which fall into two concavities, in the larger of the two bones of the leg.

[FIG 20. The Pelvis.]

This large bone is called the tibia, the smaller which is parallel to it is called the fibula; it is the tibia which is connected with the thigh-bone. (Cut 22.) In front of the knee-joints is the knee-pan, which not only protects the joint, but enables the tendons of the thighs attached to the tibia to act advantageously.

The bones of the. foot form an arch; the heel projects slightly backward. No other animal possesses a heel so formed and situated as to give its body support. The concavity of the sole enables the foot to accommodate itself to unequal surfaces. The strength and size of the foot permit man alone, of all the mammalia to stand for a time on one leg.

[FIG 21. Bones of the Foot.]

The two bones of the leg, called the tibia and the fibula, receive the great articulating bone of the foot betwixt them. And the extremities of these bones of the leg project so as to form the outer and inner ancle. Now, when we step forward, and whilst the foot is raised, it rolls easily upon the ends of these bones so that the toe may be directed according to the inequalities of the ground we are about to tread upon; but when the foot is planted, and the body carried forward perpendicularly over the foot, the joint of the leg and foot becomes fixed, and we have a steady base to rest upon.

[FIG 22. The Tibia & Fibula.]

We next observe, that, in walking, the heel touches the ground first. If the bones of the leg were perpendicular over the part which first touches the ground, we should come down with a sudden jolt, instead of which we descend in a semicircle, the centre of which is the point of the heel. And when the toes have come to the ground we are far from losing the advantages of the structure of the foot, since we stand upon an elastic arch, the hinder extremity of which is the heel, and the anterior the balls of the toes.

[FIG 23. Ligaments of the Foot.]

The arch of the foot has in its centre a bone resembling the key-stone of an arch ; but, instead of being fixed as in masonry, it plays freely betwixt two bones, and from these two bones, a strong elastic ligament is extended, on which the bone rests, sinking or rising as the weight of the body bears upon it, or is taken off; this it is enabled to do by the action of the ligament which runs under it. Notwithstanding the mobility of the foot in some positions, yet when the weight of the body bears directly over it, it becomes immoveable, and the bones of the leg must be fractured before the foot yields.

There is a general resemblance of form throughout the upper and lower extremities; their principal divisions, the number and form of the bones, and the construction of the articulations in each division correspond very closely: the essential varieties may all be referred to the principles of solidity and resistance in the lower, and of mobility in the upper, as leading purposes of formation. A comparison of the arm, fore-arm, and hand, with the thigh, the leg, and foot ; of the hip, knee, and ankle, with the shoulder, elbow, and wrist; of the separate parts of the hand with those of the foot, will at once prove and illustrate this difference.

Lubricate - to make smooth.
Synovia -a fluid like the white of an egg, for moistening the joints.
Suture - the seams uniting the bones of the skull.
Lamella - a thin plate or scale.
Rotatory - round and round; in a circle.
Process - a proceeding; also a projecting part of a vertebra, or other bone.

Two substances are usually employed for attaching the joints to each other, one of these is a tough fibrous band called a ligament the other is cartilage or gristle; the smoothness of the cartilage contributes to the easy motion of the limbs upon the joints, but their movements are made more smooth and gliding by a fluid with which they are constantly lubricated, called Synovia.

[ FIG 24. Ball and Socket and Hinge-joints.]

The smooth surfaces of the joints, and the manner in which the bones are held together by the muscles and ligaments, are well seen by examining the knuckle-joint of a leg of mutton before being cooked.

The knee and hip-joints are examples of the two principal varieties of freely-moveable articulations. In the first of these, the knee-joint, the surfaces of the bones are so formed, that the movement, though free as regards its extent, is very limited in its direction, being in fact restricted to a backward and forward action.

[FIG 25. Hinge joint.]

In the second, the hip-joint, the end of one bone is formed into a rounded bead or ball ; and this is received into a corresponding socket or cup in the other, the edge of which is usually deepened by cartilage ; in this manner the bone which carries the ball is enabled to move upon the other in any direction, unless checked.

Of the hinge-joint we have examples in the elbow, the knee, and the joints of the fingers and toes. Of the perfect ball-and-socket-joint, we have in man only two examples - the shoulder and the hip. In the former, the socket is much shallower than in the latter ; and the motions of the arm are consequently more extensive than those of the thigh ; both however are unchecked in regard to their direction, except when the limb is brought against the body or against its fellow.

[FIG 26. Ball & Socket Joint.]

The wrist and the ankle-joint are of an intermediate character; the former resembling the ball-and-socket, and the latter the hinge-joint. The wrist has so much movement that it may be called a universal joint.

Moveable joints compose the curiosity of bones ; but their union, even where no motion is intended or wanted, carries marks of mechanism and mechanical wisdom. The teeth especially the front-teeth, are one bone fixed in another, like a peg driven into a board. The sutures of the skull are like the edges of two saws, clasped together in such a manner as that the teeth of one enter the intervals of the ether. We have sometimes one bone lapping over another, and planed down at the edges; sometimes also the thin lamella of one bone is received into the narrow furrow of another in all which varieties we seem to discover the same design, viz., firmness of juncture without clumsiness in the seam.

I challenge any man, says Paley, to produce in the joints and pivots of the most complicated or the most flexible machine that was ever contrived, a construction more artificial or more evidently artificial, than that which is seen in the vertebra of the human neck. Two things were to be done; the head was to have the power of bending forward and backward, as in the act of nodding, stooping, looking upward and downward; and at the same time, of turning itself round upon the body to a certain extent.

For these two purposes two distinct contrivances are employed ; first the head rests immediately upon the uppermost of the vertebrae, and is united to it by a hinge-joint; upon which joint the head plays freely forward and backward, as far either way as is necessary, or as the ligaments allow; which was the first thing required. But then the rotatory motion is unprovided for; therefore, secondly, to make the head capable of this, a further mechanism is introduced; not between the head and the uppermost bone of the neck, where the hinge is, but between that bone and the next bone underneath it. It is a mechanism resembling a tenon-and
mortise.

[FIG 27. Tenon & Mortise.]

This second, or uppermost bone but one, has what anatomists call a process, viz., a projection, somewhat similar in size and shape, to a tooth; which tooth, entering a corresponding hole or socket in the bone above it, forms a pivot or axle, upon which that upper bone, together with the head which it supports, turns freely in a circle, and as far in the circle as the attached muscles permit.

Thus are both motions perfect without interfering with each other. When we nod the head we use the hinge-joint, which lies between the head and the first bone of the neck. When we turn the head round, we use the tenon-and-mortise, which runs between the first bone of the neck and the second.

Organic - consisting of organs.
Inorganic - without organs.
Analogous - similarly related.
Cellular - consisting of or containing cells.
Tissue - a term introduced by the French into anatomy, to express the textures which compose the different organs of animals.
Phosphate- a salt of phosphoric acid.
Laminae - plates or scales.
Membranous - overspread with a thin fibrous skin.
Cranium - The skull of an animal.
Voluntary - subject to the will.
Involuntary - uncontrolled by the will.
Biceps - with two heads, or summits.

IN man and all the higher animals, the skeleton is internal, or covered with flesh, the soft parts which are sustained by it and attached to it being external. In some of the inferior animals, as the lobster, the oyster, and the turtle, the soft parts are internal and the skeleton consisting of crust, shell, or horn, external.

In the human skeleton, the bones present every variety of size and form; the long bones which are adapted to communicate a free range of motion, are lengthened cylinders, and form so many levers, constituting organs of motion exquisitely constructed and combined for the accomplishment of their office, as is seen in the fin of the fish, in the wing of the bird, and in the limb of the quadruped.

In the employment of the flat bones for the covering of some of thee more tender and delicate organs, as the brain and spinal cord, the form of these bones is such as to add to their strength, as is manifest in the vaulted roof of the skull while in the construction of the vertebral column, composed of short and square bones, so adjusted as to afford a limited range of motion with a great degree of strength, so many and such opposite purposes are effected, that no fabric constructed by human ingenuity approaches the perfection of tins admirable piece of mechanism.

Bone is composed of two distinct substances, an animal and an earthy matter; the former organic, the latter inorganic. The animal or organic matter is analogous both in its nature and arrangement to cellular tissue ; the earthy or inorganic matter consists of phosphoric acid combined with lime, forming phosphate of lime. The cellular tissue is aggregated into plates or laminae, which are placed one upon another, leaving between them cells, in which is deposited the earthy matter - phosphate of lime.

If the bone called the radius, be immersed in strong acid, it retains its original bulk and shape; it loses however, a considerable portion of its weight, while it becomes so soft and pliable, that it may be tied in a knot. In this case, its earthy matter is removed by the agency of the acid, and is held in solution in the fluid; what remains is membranous matter - cellular tissue.

[FIG 28. Tied Bone.]

If the same bone be placed in a charcoal fire, and the heat be gradually raised to whiteness, it appears on cooling as white as chalk; it is extremely brittle ; it has lost much of its weight, yet its bulk and shape continue but little changed. In this case, the membranous matter is wholly consumed by the fire, while the earthy part is left unchanged.

This section of the femur, or thigh-bone, which is the longest, thickest, and strongest bone in the body, shows its construction, combining strength with lightness. The shaft of the bone is dense, and compact; it is hollow, and thus allows a larger diameter without addition of weight, for the resisting power of a cylindrical body increases in proportion to its diameter. The hollow part contains the marrow. At the two extremities the bone swells out in bulky surfaces, but these surfaces are composed of spongy tissues covered by a thin crust of compact bone.

[FIG 29. Section of the Femur.]

The chief uses of bone are - 1. By its hardness and firmness to afford a support to the soft parts, forming pillars to which the more delicate and flexible organs arc attached and kept in their relative positions. 2. To defend the soft and tender organs by forming a case in which they are lodged and protected, as that formed by the bones of the cranium for the lodgement and protection of the brain; by the bones of the spinal column for the lodgement and protection of the spinal cord; by the bones of the thorax for the lodgement and protection of the lungs, the heart, and the great vessels connected with it. 3. By affording fixed points for the action of the muscles, and by assisting the joints to aid the muscles in accomplishing the functions of locomotion.

The muscles are divided into two classes: the voluntary and the involuntary. The former class, those over which the will exercises a direct controul, are subservient to all the actions by which the animal is placed in active relation with the external world, as in all the motions of the limbs, of speech, of the eye, ears, &c., and they are therefore often called the muscles of animal life; the latter class comprehending those whose actions are connected with the internal and nutritive functions of the body, over which the will has no immediate or constant controul, form the muscular system of organic life; as tie heart, the muscular coat of the stomach, &c.

[FIG 30. Muscles of the upper arm.]

The muscles are very flexible and extensible, but they have no elasticity; they serve many purposes, their substance clothes the skeleton, they are traversed by blood-vessels and nerves, they impart the motive power to the frame; but by what means they act we know not. Every muscle in the human body has another that acts in opposition to it. By one set of muscles, called flexors, the joints are bent, by another set - tensors, they are straightened.

The wood-cut (30) conveys a tolerably correct idea of the biceps muscle in front of the upper arm - the tendons which unite it to the shoulder-blade, and that which connects it with the lower arm. When the hand is lifted towards the head these muscles shorten and become thicker towards the middle ; if the arm is let fall, they again lengthen, and are aided by another set of muscles at the back of the arm which contract for the occasion.

auricle-the two smaller cavities of the so named from their supposed resemblance in shape to the ear of an animal.
Ventricle - a name applied to the two larger cavities in the heart.
Apparatus - parts, mechanism.
Function - motion, act, operation, performance.
oesophagus-the gullet, which carries the food to the stomach.
Larynx - the upper part of the windpipe.
Trachea - the windpipe.
Capillary - resembling fine hairs; the minute blood-vessels, by which the terminal arteries and veins communicate with one another.

THEE heart is the organ that moves the blood; the arteries are tubes which convey the blood from the heart to every part of the system ; the veins are tubes which return the blood again into the heart; the heart contracts to force the blood into the arteries; and dilates to receive the blood from the veins. The arteries also expand and contract as the blood passes through them; this alternate expansion and contraction constitutes the pulse. The veins have valves which prevent the blood from flowing backwards.

The heart is divided into two sets of chambers, one for the reception of the blood from the different parts of the body; the other for the communication of the impulse which keeps the blood in motion. The chamber which receives the blood is termed an auricle, and is connected with a vessel called a vein; that which communicates impulse to the blood is termed a ventricle, and is connected with a vessel termed an artery.

[FIG 31. Chambers of the heart.]

The vein carries blood to the auricle; the auricle transmits it to the ventricle, the ventricle propels it into the artery; the artery carrying it from the ventricle, ultimately sends it again into the vein, the vein returns it to the auricle, the auricle to the ventricle, the ventricle to the artery, and thus the blood is constantly moving in a circle; hence the name of the process, the circulation of the blood.

The apparatus connected with the function of respiration is necessarily complex; it consists of a vessel to carry the air to the blood; a vessel to carry the blood to the air; an organ in which the air and the blood meet; and an organization by which both fluids are put in motion. The vessel that carries the air to the blood is the windpipe; the vessel that carries the blood to the air is the pulmonary artery; the organ in which the blood and the air meet is the lung; the organization which puts the air in motion, is the structure of bones, cartilage, and muscles, called the thorax, and the engine that communicates motion to the blood is the right ventricle of the heart.

[FIG 32. Lungs and Heart.]

The windpipe is a tube which extends from the mouth and nostrils to the lungs, it is attached to the back part of the tongue, and passes down the neck in front of the oesophagus, or the tube which leads to the stomach. The upper part of the windpipe is the larynx, one of the organs of speech; the middle part consisting of strong rings of cartilage which we may feel in front of the neck, is the trachea, which branches off into two tubes at the entrance to the lungs, one to each lung, and which terminate in smaller tubes that extend to every part of the light spongy substance forming the lungs; thus air is conveyed to the numerous air-cells, of which the lungs are composed, which are inflated or collapsed as air is drawn inwards or breathed outwards.

[FIG 33. A. Trachea. B. Bronchial Tubes.]

The different chambers of the heart have a tendency to perform their movements in a uniform manner, and in a successive order: they contract and dilute in regular alternation, and at equal intervals; but, moreover, they continue these movements equally without rest and without fatigue. On go the motions, night and day, for eighty years together, at the rate of a hundred thousand strokes every twenty-four hours alike without disorder, cessation, or weariness. The muscles of the arm tire after an hour's exertion, are exhausted after a day's labour, and can, by no effort, be made to work beyond a certain period. There is no appreciable difference between the muscular substance of the heart and that of the arm.

Why the heart is unwearied, why it never requires rest we do not know. We know the necessities of the system which render it indispensable that it should be capable of untiring action, for we know that the first hour of its repose would be the last of life ; but of the mode in which the wonderful endowment is communicated, or of the relations upon which it is dependent, we are wholly ignorant.

The blood circulating through the body is of two different kinds ; the one bright red or arterial blood, and the other dark or venous blood. The former alone is capable of affording nourishment and of supporting life. It is distributed from the left side of the heart all over the body, by moans of a great artery, or blood-vessel, called the aorta, which subdivides in its course, and ultimately terminates in myriads of very minute ramifications, called the capillary branches, closely interwoven with, and in reality constituting a large portion of the texture of every living part.

On reaching this extreme point of its course, the blood passes into equally minute ramifications of the veins, which in their turn, gradually coalesce and form larger and larger trunks, till they at last terminate in two very large veins, by which the whole current of the venous blood is brought back in a direction contrary to that in the arteries, and poured into the right side of the heart.

[FIG 34. Artery, trunk & branches.]

On examining the quality of the blood in these two systems of vessels, it is found to have undergone a great change in its passage from one to the other. The florid hue which distinguishes it in the arteries, has disappeared and given place to the dark colour characteristic of venous blood. Its properties, too, have changed, and it is now no longer capable of sustaining life.

Two conditions arc essential to the re-conversion of venous into arterial blood, and to the restoration of its vital properties. The first is an adequate provision of new materials from the food, to supply the place of those which have been expended in nutrition; and the second is the free exposure of the venous blood to the atmospheric air.

saliva - the fluid in the mouth; spittle.
Duodenum - the tube leading out of the stomach.
Chyle - the milky liquid absorbed by the lacteals.
Lacteal - the vessel which takes up the chyle.
Mesentery - the membrane which attaches the intestines to the spine.
Thoracic duct - belonging to the chest.
lymphatic - applied to the vessels which convey lymph.
medullary-relating to marrow.
Distention - stretching out in one or more directions.
Secretion - separation of substances in animal bodies & plants.
Comminuting - bruising; reducing to small particles.

The various processes by which nutrition is carried on are very curious and instructive. When food is received into the mouth it is softened by the saliva, and masticated by the action of the teeth. It is then transmitted through a pipe called the oesophagus into the stomach.

The stomach is an irregular oval bag in which the food is converted into a pulpy substance called chyme, by the aid of a peculiar fluid called the gastric juice, which dissolves it. During this chemical process a mechanical one is also going forward, for the coats of the stomach move the food, so as to bring fresh portions successively under the influence of the gastric juice.

[FIG 35. Stomach, &c. A. Oesophagus. B. Duodenum.]

The whole of the food we take, however various, is converted into chyme ; but this substance contains matter which would afford no nutriment to the body, if it were carried through it; the nutrient principle, has therefore to be separated. The process of chymification usually occupies five hours. As the chyme is elaborated, it is permitted to pass at intervals, into a part of the stomach called the duodenum, till the entire process is completed.

The nutritious portion of the chyme, called chyle, is separated from the substance to be thrown off; this is effected by a secretion called bile. The nutrient fluid - chyle, is now fit to be distributed throughout the system for its nourishment; it is taken into the system by innumerable vessels called lacteals, while the noxious or useless portions of the chyme find their way into the large intestines, and are carried out of the body.

The chyle, which is blood in an early stage of formation, is transmitted through the small intestines, and in its course, it is absorbed by the lacteals, which are innumerable small orifices at first, but which unite till they form vessels of considerable size; the chyle passes through the folds of a delicate membrane called the mesentery, where it undergoes a further change; it is thence conducted to a tube which passes upwards in front of the spine, called the thoracic duct, where it meets another set of absorbent vessels called lymphatics, the watery fluid - lymph, being contained in them.

The chyle and lymph commingled take their course upward to a large vein, leading directly to the heart, in which they are mixed with venous blood and are, with it, transmitted to the lungs. It is during the circulation of the blood that those secretions take place by which the frame is renewed, developed, and repaired.

All the modifications of cellular substance, in its various states of condensation, - the membranes, the ligaments, the cartilages, the bones, the marrow; the muscles, with their tendons; the lubricating fluid of the joints; the medullary pulp of the brain; the transparent jelly of the eye; in a word, all the diversified textures of the various organs, which are calculated for such different offices, are derived from the same nutrient fluid, and may be considered as being merely modified arrangements of the same chemical elements.

Hunger is caused by the distention of the blood-vessels of the stomach which takes place in preparation for the secretion of the gastric fluid; this occurs whenever the body requires a fresh supply of nourishment. It is well known that the natural disposition of a very hungry person is to chew hastily and imperfectly and to bolt his food. He is not satisfied till the food reaches his stomach. Food, however, when insufficiently masticated, and swallowed in large and hard masses, is liable to injure the oesophagus in going down, and when it reaches the stomach, is difficult of digestion.

One purpose of the senses of taste and flavour which we enjoy is, to induce us to continue comminuting the food in the mouth, and bruising it as long as its taste and flavour last; while we are gratifying these senses, the food acquires the requisite consistence for easy swallowing and digestion. The time gained by this process prevents the stomach being too rapidly filled, and allows the appetite to be satiated before the stomach is overloaded.

Solidification - that is the conversion of blood into the solid parts of the body - goes on only during sleep. The chief end, indeed, and object and intention of sleep, would seem to be this final assimilation of our food - this solidification of the blood into the several solid parts of the body. The accomplishment of this miraculous change seems to have required the perfect concentration of all the energies of the system upon itself, that the attention of the brain and nervous system should not be distracted by any other object.

To this end, the portals of sensation are closed - the eye sees not - the ear hears not - the skin feels not - the very breathing is scarcely audible - the pulsations of the heart are scarcely perceptible ; all living energies are now concentrated into the greatest possible intensity, like rays of light into a focus; and directed with almost complete exclusiveness, towards this simple object. In the day therefore we make blood ; -in the night that blood is converted into solid matter. In the day we garner up the building materials, in the night we repair the building.

There is no fact more clearly established in the physiology of man than this, that the brain expends its energies during the hours of wakefulness, and that these are replenished during sleep. We read of persons who were condemned to death by being prevented from sleeping, and that such persons always died raving maniacs; thus it is that those who are starved to death first become insane; the brain is not nourished, and they cannot sleep.

Those who think most, who do most brain-work, require most sleep, and time saved from necessary sleep is destructive to mind, body, and estate. As a general, and safe rule, people should go to bed at some regular, early hour, and rise in the morning the moment they awake of themselves.

excretion - in medicine, a separation of matter from the body.
Carbon - pure charcoal. The diamond is the only form of pure carbon.
Respiration - the act of breathing.
Emaciation - gradual wasting of flesh.
absorbents - vessels which imbibe fluids.

The chief functions of organic life are those connected with nutrition; they are intended for the maintenance or support of the bodily fabric, and for the renewal of the mechanism of the instruments of sensation and motion, so that they may be able to act in accordance with the instincts, the emotions, or the will.

The circulation of the blood cannot be sustained without a due supply of food from which blood is firmed; the food cannot be digested, so as to replenish the blood, but by the aid of the stomach and the other digestive organs; the blood cannot be purified and enabled to sustain life without a due admixture of fresh air in the lungs.

Besides these operations there are many others which must be regularly performed to insure a state of health. Substances are formed in certain parts of the body called secretions, which aid in these operations; saliva is secreted in the organs of taste, and assists in the softening of the food; gastric juice is secreted for the use of the stomach, and dissolves the food ; bile is secreted in the liver; it assists digestion, and performs other important offices ; fat is deposited in layers in various parts of the body.

The chief excretion performed by the skin in the human body is commonly known under the name of perspiration. The perspiration is either sensible, or insensible. Sensible perspiration is the liquid commonly called sweat. Insensible perspiration consists of a vapour which, under the ordinary circumstances in which the body is placed, is invisible. This invisible vapour is constantly exhaling; but the visible liquid is only occasionally formed. The quantity of matter carried out of the system under the form of invisible vapour is much greater than that lost by the visible liquid.

The effect of the suppression of excretion, when the suppression is complete, is appalling. Stop the respiration - that is, suspend the purifying action of the lungs, carbon accumulates in the venous blood; carbon mixes with the arterial blood; in half a minute the blood flowing in the arteries is evidently darkened; in three quarters of a minute it is of a dusky hue; in a minute and half it is quite black; every particle of arterial blood has now disappeared, and the whole mass has become venous.

With the first appearance of the dusky hue great disturbance is produced in the system ; the instant it becomes dark sensibility is abolished ; in a few minutes after it is black the power of the heart is so enfeebled that it can no longer carry on the circulation, and in a few minutes more its action wholly ceases, and can never again be excited. The brain feels the poison first, and is first killed; but the heart cannot long resist the fatal influence.

Stop the secretion of bile, a poison accumulates in the blood as potent, producing insensibility and death as rapidly, as that generated by the suppression of the purifying action of the kidneys. Only obstruct the secretion of the bile, merely prevent its due expulsion from the blood, just in proportion to its suppression does the system suffer from languor, lassitude, and inaptitude for every muscular and mental exertion.

When, on the contrary, all these excretions are well and duly performed, how regular and tranquil, yet how full and strong the flow of the circulating current; how rich the stream poured into it by every organ; how healthfully exciting its influence on them all; how gentle, how efficient every organic action; how complete the absence of all note or sensible intimation that any such action is going on, yet how delicious the consciousness produced by its soundness and vigour; how acute the sense, how bounding the motion, how quick the perceptions; how the pure blood mantles in the cheek, and diffuses its sparkling colour over all the transparent complexion ; how the jocund spirits laugh from the eyes; how the intellectual und sympathizing mind beams forth from them with a higher and holier happiness! How wonderfully beautiful is such a human body, and how magnificently endowed in its capacity to give and receive enjoyment.

Fat is deposited whenever an excessive quantity of nutritive matter is poured into the blood, and especially when at the same time the different secretions and excretions are diminished.

During fever and other acute diseases when little food is received, and still less converted into chyle, the extreme emaciation which the body undergoes is owing partly to the disappearance of the fat, which is taken by the absorbents and carried into the blood, in order to compensate for the deficiency of nutrient matter supplied by the digestive organs.

congruity - suitability.
Gravitation - the tendency of all substances towards a centre.
Volition - the exercise of the power of the will.
Bimane - two handed.
Index - the fore-finger.
Premonstrator - one that shows beforehand.
Beneficent - doing good.
Maleficent - doing evil.
Valediction - a bidding farewell.
Antipodes - those who live on the opposite aide of the globe, and whose feet are opposed to ours.

There is a congruity subsisting between the powers of the mind and those of the body, the latter being subservient to the former. Man is sensible of the power of communicating motion to himself and other objects, and this power depends on his will - its execution can be suspended or increased - but he has no consciousness how his will acts on his limbs. How the desires of the mind are connected with the nervous system so as to produce muscular action is as inscrutable as the cause of gravitation.

The mind is the agent, the body the instrument; the former the master, the latter the servant. To the volitions of the mind, as actuated by the several desires, appetites, and affections of which it is the subject, the body is promptly obedient.

If I will to move from one place to another, the limbs immediately execute the wish. If I desire to continue or stop the motion with which I write, the hands and the fingers are obedient to the volition. If I touch an object which gives me pain, the muscles, as if by instinct, withdraw the hand.

If I will to respire, a process which generally goes on without volition, no fewer than 100 muscles are instantly in motion, all concurring to produce the effect. And it is a circumstance, worthy of attention, that we exert no immediate power over the muscular organs, with whose existence even we may possibly not be acquainted, but merely will to move and the motion follows.

The Hand of man has already been considered (pp. 13,14.) as an animal organ - in the following extract it is treated of as a moral organ.

Man takes his particular denomination from the hand. He is the only Bimane. I shall not here say anything on its structure and its uses; but as it has not been treated of as a moral organ ; as being in intimate connexion with the heart and affections; as their principal index and premonstrator; and as the mighty instrument by which a great part of the physical good and evil which befalls our race is wrought, I may be permitted to make a few observations upon it as for as these ale concerned.

God made the body in general a fit machine, not only to execute the purposes of its immaterial inhabitant, the soul; but, in some sort, he made it a mirror to reflect all its bearings and character ; to indicate every motion of the fluctuating sea within, whether its surges lift themselves on high, elevated by the gusts of passion or all is calm, and tranquil, and subdued. No one of the bodily organs, by its structure and station in the body, is so evidently formed in all respects for these functions as the HAND.

The eye, indeed, is, perhaps, the most faithful mirror of the soul's emotion; yet though it may best pourtray and render visible the internal feeling, it can in no degree execute its biddings; but the hand is the great agent and minister of the soul, which not only reveals her inmost affection and feeling, and, in conjunction with the tongue, - and these two in connexion are either the most beneficent or maleficent of all our organs, - declares her will and purpose; but is also employed by her to execute them. Thus HEART and HAND - principle and practice, have been united, in common parlance, from ancient ages.

The earliest dawn of reason in the innocent infant is shown by the signs it makes with its little hands; by them it prefers its petitions for anything it desires ; and, in imitation of this, God's children are instructed to lift up holy hands in prayer. Love, friendship, charity, and all the kindly affections of our nature, use the hands as their symbol and organ; the fond embrace, the hearty shake, the liberal gift are all ministered by them. Joy, gladness, applause, welcome, valediction, all use these organs to represent them. Penitence smites her breast with them ; resignation clasps them ; devotion and the love of God stretches them out towards heaven.

But the hands are not employed to express only the kindly affections of the soul. Those of a contrary and less amiable character use them as their index. Anger threatens, and more violent and hateful passions destroy by them. They are, indeed, the instruments by which a great portion of the evil, and mischief, and violence, and misery, that our corrupt nature has introduced into the world, are perpetrated.

The hand also on some occasions, becomes the spokesman instead of the tongue. The forefinger is denominated the index, because we use it to indicate to another any object to which we wish to direct his attention. By the hands the deaf and dumb person is enabled to hold converse with others, so as not to be totally cut off from the enjoyment of society; and by them we can likewise mutually communicate our thoughts, when separated by space however wide, even with our Antipodes.

How grateful, then, ought we to be to our Creator, for enriching us with these admirable organs, which more than any others that we possess, are the immediate instruments that enable us to master the whole globe that we inhabit; not merely the visible and tangible matter that we tread upon, and its furniture and population ; but even to take hold, as it were, of the invisible substances that float around it and to bottle up the lightning and the wind, as well as the waters ! Thus by their means, do we add daily some increase to our knowledge and science, and, consequently, power; to our skill in arts, and every allied manufacture; to our comforts, our pleasures, and everything desirable in life.

pyramid - a solid body with flat three-cornered sides ending in a point, but flat at the base.
Concentration - the power of bringing to a central point.
Amphibious - living both on land and in water.
Humour - moisture; applied to the fluids of animal bodies.
Quadruped - having four feet.
Apparatus - tools, utensils, instruments or other means for accomplishing a desired end.
Lachrymal - relating to tears.
Camera - a chamber; an instrument used in drawing, photography &c
Animalcule - one of the smallest forms of animal life.

The information acquired by the mind through the sense of SIGHT is more varied than that communicated through any other sense, singly taken; but it is less accurate. The sense of sight requires education and assistance, and both are given through the sense of touch.

The eye assists us greatly in determining the motions, the magnitudes and the distances of bodies, yet in spite of experience, we are often deceived. When a body moves in a straight line from us, we cannot tell whether it moves or not, and we then only come to the conclusion that it recedes in consequence of its becoming more obscure, and from a change in its relative position to other objects which we know to be stationary.

When we travel in a railway carriage, the banks, the hedgerows, and the fields, seem as if gliding with extreme velocity away from us. It is only by a course of reasoning that we know such is not the fact; it is true that the course of reasoning is very short and simple, yet still that reasoning is requisite; indeed, it has been acknowledged only in modern times that the sun is stationary, and that the earth moves.

Objects of gigantic magnitude, as, for instance, the pyramids of Egypt, at first appear less than they are in reality; and it is only by admeasurement, examination, and comparison, that the mind becomes impressed with the idea of their immensity.

An infant does not distinguish between near and distant objects; its eyes have yet to become educated, and so have those of adults when placed in circumstances to which they are unaccustomed.

That beautiful instrument the eye, so artistically contrived that the most ingenious workman could not imagine an improvement of it, becomes still more interesting and more wonderful, when we find that its conformation is varied with the different necessities of each animal. If the animal prowls by night, we see the opening of the pupil, and the power of concentration in the eye increased. If an amphibious animal has occasionally to dive into the water, with the change of the medium through which the rays pass, there is an accommodation in the condition of the humours, and the eye partakes of that, both of the quadruped and the fish.

[FIG 36. Eye of Perch. C. Cornea. L. Lens. V. Vitreous Humour. R. Retina. O. Optic nerve. S. Sclerotic coat.]

Again, in fishes whose eye is washed by the element in which they move, all the exterior apparatus is unnecessary, and is dismissed; but in the crab, and especially in that species which lives in mud, the very peculiar and horny prominent eye would be quite obscured were it not for a peculiar provision. There is a little brush of hair above the eye, against which the eye is occasionally raised to wipe off what may adhere to it. The form of the eye, and the particular mode in which it is moved, and the coarseness of the instrument, compared with the parts in the same organ in the higher class of animals, make the mechanism of eyelids and of lachrymal glands unsuitable.

The eye, that great inlet of man's knowledge, that which may he called the visible dwelling of the soul, or at least the window of that dwelling - that from which all the fire of passion darts, through which the languor of exhaustion is perceived, in which life and thought seem concentrated - the eye is nothing but a simple camera obscura.

The nature of the eye as a camera obscura is beautifully exhibited by taking the eye of a recently killed bullock, and after carefully cutting away or thinning the outer coat of it behind, by going with it to a dark place and directing the pupil towards any brightly-illuminated objects; then, through the semi-transparent retina left at the back of the eye may be seen a minute but perfect picture of all such objects - a picture, therefore, formed on the back of the little apartment or camera obscura, by the agency of the convex cornea and lens in front.

Understanding from all this, that when a man is engaged in what is called looking at an object, his mind is in truth only taking cognizance of the picture or impression made on his retina, it excites admiration in us to think of the exquisite delicacy of texture and of sensibility which the retina must possess, that there may be the perfect perception which really occurs of even the separate parts of the minute images there formed. A whole printed sheet of newspaper, for instance, may be represented on the retina on less surface than that of a fingernail, and yet not only shall every word and letter be separately perceivable, but even any imperfection of a single letter.

Or, more wonderful still, when at night an eye is turned up to the blue vault of heaven, there is pourtrayed on the little concave of the retina the boundless concave of the sky, with every object in its just proportions. There a moon in beautiful miniature may be seen sailing among her white-edged clouds, and surrounded by a thousand twinkling stars, so that to an animalcule, supposed to be within and near the pupil, the retina might appear another starry firmament with all its glory. If the images in the human eye be thus minute, what must they be in the little eye of a canary bird, or of another animal smaller still ! How wonderful are the works of nature !

propagated - produced, continued.
Atmospherical - relating to the air.
Vibrations - motions to and fro, quivering, waving.
Vacuum - space containing nothing.
Intonations - tones of the voice.
en masse - in a body.
Arbitrary - controlled by no laws.

THE mechanism of HEARING is simple in its arrangement, and beautifully adapted to its purposes. The ear offers an inviting subject to such as are disposed to investigate the minute mechanism of an organ which contributes to some of our most refined enjoyments. Whoever has attentively observed the distressing effects arising from a loss or diminution of its sensibility, will readily acknowledge that such deprivation throws us at a distance from oar fellow-creatures, and, renders us more solitary beings than by the loss of sight itself.

Though the rapid glance of the eye, the immense distance to which it enables us to carry our perceptions, and the extended circle it embraces, have given rise to some of our most pleasurable sensations; though it has brought us acquainted with objects which seemed ever placed far beyond our reach; still, the more confined dominion of the car, contributes most efficiently to the every-day happiness of life. It enables us to hold communication with our fellow-creatures; to improve and exalt our understandings by the mutual interchange of ideas; and thus to increase the circle not only of our physical, but of our moral relations.

[FIG 37. Bones of the Ear separately. a. the malleus or hammer. b. the incus or anvil. c. the os orbiculare. d. the stapes or stirrup-bone.]

Sound, which is the object of this sense, is propagated by atmospherical vibrations, and cannot be so propagated in a vacuum, that is, where there is no atmosphere to receive and convey it. These vibrations or impulses are gathered together by the beautifully formed and arranged external ear; they are concentrated and conveyed to the membrane which is called the dram ; the vibrations thus received, are propagated to some exquisitely minute and beautifully formed little bones in the middle of the ear, which probably increase and define the sounds, and conduct them to the wondrously constructed internal ear, and to the auditory nerve, by which they are received, and through which the perception and distinction of sound are communicated to the brain.

It is a curious fact, that the admission of air to the internal ear, seems necessary to the sense of hearing, and this is provided for by a tube, called the eustachian, (see cut 10) which passes from the throat; if this tube be closed, as it is sometimes from cold, temporary deaf­ness is the consequence till this route has been re-established.

[FIG 38. Cavity of the Tympanum with the bones in their places.]

There is too a great difference in the ears of differ­ent persons: there is, in the first place, the dull and the sensitive ear - the one alive to every impression - the other allowing considerable impressions to pass unheeded and unawakened. There is also a musical, and a non-musical ear - the one alive to all the enjoyments arising from the combination of sounds - the other deprived of this enjoyment: the difference being altogether independent of that cultivation which will do a great deal for a defective organ.

Partially deaf people are conscious of sound by bringing some part of their body in immediate contact with the object emitting the sound, as by placing the hand on a musical instrument. Deaf and dumb people are aware of the approach of a carriage, and even of a footstep, by a slight vibration of the nervous system, occasioned by the earth serving as a conductor to the sound : and in the same way they feel the slamming of a door in a distant part of the house.

Animals have a natural language, expressive of pain or pleasure, of surprise, of fear, of anger ; and this language consists of cries or tones, variously modulated, each species having its own range of vocal intonations, while every species understands the simple instinctive language of its own species.

Some birds, for example, as the wild geese, have sentinels around the flock while feeding, and rise en masse at the warning cry of their guards. Who has not marked the distress and agitation of the ewe, when she hears the plaintive tremulous bleat of her lamb, forcibly separated from her?

The warning note of the cock, his cluck of invitation, his scream of surprise or fear, his cackle of agitation, his crow of defiance, are well understood by his train. Quadrupeds, birds and even some insects call to each other, and are answered again -

“Steed answers steed with loud and boastful neighings.”

The bird invites his mate by a sweet strain, and is answered by her low chirp. The call of the young in their nests is responded to by the parents; the parents call to each other, as if to assure themselves of each other’s safety, or to find out where they mutually are, and what they are doing.

imitation is an instinct we see it powerful in its dominion aver children ; it is in exercise before reason assumes a definite sway ; it prompts to the acquisition of the mother-tongue. till, by repetition, the true pronunciation is acquired, and the names of all common articles known: then reason steps in.

Language is the appeal of definite sounds, through the organs of hearing, to the mind these sounds are arbitrary they do not in any way represent things, or the qualities, or the state of things : for, indeed, language is based altogether on a system of association - it has to be acquired : that is, the mind has to be taught to associate certain sounds with certain mental perceptions; but these sounds do not mean the same thing in every language or dialect.

Though language consists in a system of sounds uttered by the month, appealing through the sense of hearing to the mind, yet man has contrived to effect the same purpose through the eye, and hence is enabled to convoy to others at a distance his thoughts, his observations, his wishes, and his views - to transmit to posterity the result of his labours and researches, or the outpourings of his genius.

salivary - connected with the production of spittle.
Discrimination - the act of distinguishing one thing from another.
Ruminating – the second process of chewing, possessed by cattle and some other animals.
Phenomena – natural effects.
Effluvia – exhalations from bodies and substances.
Infinitesimal – infinitely small, less than any known quantity.
Mammalia – animals which suckle their young.
Amphibia – animals which live both on land and in water.
Orifice – opening – the mouth, as of a tube, or cavity.
Convolution – a rolling together.
Essence – odour, perfume.

By means of the organs of TASTE and SMELL, animals discriminate between the properties of bodies, especially of those which partake of the nature of food. They are situated in the spongy, moist skin which surrounds the mouth and the nostrils, parts of which are so exquisitely tender that any application of force to them is sufficient to subjugate the most untractable animal.

That the sense of taste is conducive to the enjoyment of animals, is obvious from the eagerness with which they seek after and devour some things, while they pass by others, or only touch them when driven by hunger, and positively refuse others altogether. Their sense of perception is so acute, that with the exception of the leaves of the yew, which apparently have some attraction, and are fatal in their effects, they never touch anything of a poisonous or baneful nature.

[FIG 39. The Tongue showing the papillae.]

It is, however, highly probable that this sense is the most highly developed in those animals, furnished with a tongue and salivary glands, although great discrimination is shown by some of the inferior classes, as the
leech, which sucks greedily sweetened water, and in medical cases operates more efficaciously on healthy than unhealthy patients.

Ruminating animals, although they show a stronger partiality for some roots and grasses, than for others, and thus have a preference for them, experience greater gratifica­tion of the taste in the second process of chewing the cud.

The sense of SMELL is in chose connection with, and in­dispensable to, the foregoing sense; but its power and utility, far from being limited to that one end, are so essential to the existence and necessities of animals, that its development, exceeding by so much that of any other sense in delicacy and susceptibility, is among the greatest phenomena of animal life. Its object is to distinguish effluvia, which light as the air itself, spread themselves with instantaneous rapidity over an extensive range of atmosphere. It is most probable that all animal and vegetable bodies give out these infinitesimal particles to a most abundant degree, but our organs are too blunt to detect them, although the savage races and animals perceive them immediately.

The North American Indians can not only detect the presence of man at a great distance, but can distinguish with certainty between white men and those of their own race. Camels passing through the desert can scent water at the distance of two or three miles, and rush to it in the straightest direction, and the cattle in Paraguay wind it even still further.

The seat of this sense is in the nostrils, which mammalia, birds, and amphibiae, communicate with the mouth, and in all animals possessing great powers of scent, the orifices are peculiarly large, with many internal convolutions; in fish they are small, and terminate abruptly, and although no distinct organs have been discovered lower in the scale of life, as in snails, crabs, carrion beetles, bees, and other insects, yet it is evident that they scent their food at an amazing distance.

Animals follow in pursuit either by the power of the actual scent itself, or by the trail left on the earth in the passage of the flying object. Thus hounds run breast-high when the scent is hot, and puzzle anxiously along the ground when the surrounding air no longer supports it.

The faculty consists in the attempt to distinguish the various essences floating in the atmosphere, to which end the animal turns his nose to the wind and inhales strongly ; it would seem to be a sense of enjoyment, as in the case of the pointer, notwithstanding education has brought all his powers in subjection, yet the inflation of the nostrils, and the tremulous movement of the jowls, when he is in the act of setting game, are highly remarkable.

The stag can scent a man at the distance of several hundred paces; and Scoresby relates that the polar bear climbs the icebergs and winds a dead whale, and even a lump of the cooked flesh, at many miles away.

Integument – anything which covers something else, as the skin of an animal, the husk of a seed.
Sentient – a faculty that perceives.
Nocturnal – belonging to the night.
Carnivora – animals that devour flesh.
Quadrumana – four-handed animals.
Prehensile – adapted to seize or grasp.
Tactile – that may be touched or felt.
Polypi – animals with many arms, feet, tentacles, &c.
Cephalopods – a class of molluscous animals.
Tentacula - a feeler or holder.
Denuded – made bare.
Absorption – the act of sucking up or imbibing.

The sense of touch in the class Mammalia is diffused over the whole surface of the body ; its perfection in different parts being of course influenced by the nature of the integument, and the number of sentient nerves appropriated to any given region.

In a class so extensively distributed, we need net be surprised to find a special apparatus of touch developed in very different and remote parts adapted to particular exigencies.

Thus the whiskers of the Seals and of nocturnal Carnivora, the lips of the horse, the trunk of the Elephant, the hands of Man, the hind feet of the Quadrumana, and even the extremity of the tail where that organ is prehensile, are all in turn made available as tactile instruments, and exercise the sense in question with the utmost delicacy.

In the Bats, where the sense of vision becomes inadequate to guide them through the dark recesses where they lurk, that of touch assumes its utmost development, and every part of the body that could by possibility be furnished with it has been abundantly provided for in this respect.

[FIG 40. The Bat.]

Not only is the broad expanse of the wing acutely sensible, but the very ears have been converted into delicate feelers; nay, from the tip of the nose in some species, membranes of equal sensibility have been largely developed, so that the Bats, as was ascertained by Spallanzani, even when deprived of sight and hearing, will fly fearlessly along, and avoid every obstacle with wonderful precision, guided apparently by the sense of touch alone.

The organs of touch serve in many instances equally for the purposes of motion as for the catching of food. In the Polypi and Cephalopods, the many-jointed tentacula, placed in conjunction with the organs of digestion, seize the feed, nourish the body, and assist its motion.

[FIG 41. Hydra showing tentacula.]

The lips and snouts of fish are furnished with numerous nerves. Snakes, from their peculiar bodily construction, have the perception of touch highly developed for, from the great flexibility of the spine, they can seize and wind them­selves round all objects, and make themselves acquainted with their nature ; and hence, doubtless, arose the saying, that “their body is their hand.”

[FIG 42. Chameleon showing prehensile tail.]

The prehensile tail of the lizard tribe, of the chameleons and geckos, and of some species of monkeys, is a powerful instrument of this sense. Even the thick and apparently insensible skin of these animals has a clear perception of touch ; and the lizard, notwithstanding its scales, is immediately aware of a fly settling upon it.

Among birds the point of the bill is a delicate organ of touch, but it. is most strongly developed in the waders and swimmers. Thee bill is covered with a fine membrane, which possesses the nicest power of’ discrimination and sensation, and enables them to seek their food deep in the mud, where its presence is detected by the touch alone. The toes, also, furnished with a kind of wart-like process, possess the same property to a great extent.

The tongue of the woodpecker, elongated and furnished at the tip with a kind of bristly process, is remarkably sensitive; for when thrust into a hole in a tree, it is instantly aware of its contact with an insect, however small, and is withdrawn with the insect cleaving to the point.

[FIG 43. Tongue of the Woodpecker.]

The perfection of the sense of touch in man resides in the hand, and especially in the extremities of the fingers. Of course this is to be referred to the sentient extremities of nerves which supply the true skin ; and the cuticle is placed over it to protect and preserve those nerves from the otherwise harsh impressions which would be made upon their denuded sentient extremities. The hand forms a most extraordinarily sensitive organ, and it is impossible to appreciate the amount of information which may he conveyed by the tips of the fingers nor is it easy to estimate the true value of such intelligence.

The three powers of the skin – perspiration, absorption, and feeling, are so dependent on each other, that it is impossible for one to be deranged without the other two being also disordered. For if a man be exposed to a frosty atmosphere in a state of inactivity, or without sufficient clothing, till his limits become stiff and his skin insensible, the vessels that excite the perspiration and the absorbent vessels partake of the torpor that has seized on the nerves of feeling, nor will they regain their lost activity till the sensibility be completely restored.

Sensorium – the sear of senses or perception, commonly supposed to be in the brain.
Omnivorous – feeding on all kinds of substances.
Tropical – belonging to the tropics – the two circles parallel to the equator.
Locomotive – moveable from place to place.
Telescope – an optical instrument for viewing distant objects.
Microscope – an optical instrument for viewing minute objects.

The point which mainly distinguishes the animal from the vegetable kingdom is sensation. The capacity for sensation may be defined as the internal power by which living creatures perceive the impressions of external things. The appointed instruments through which they receive these impressions, are certain parts of those mechanical structures which have already been described, viz., the brain and nervous system, and the external organs of sense.

These instruments act with each other in a wonderful manner. Notwithstanding the perfection of their structure, blind would be the eye, deaf the ear, tasteless the tongue, and senseless the skin, were not animals furnished with a brain for a sensorium, and with nerves for feelers; and utterly useless would be the whole of this machinery, were there not, under it all, the mysterious principle of sensitive existence. hidden, however, from the scrutiny of the eye or of the understanding.

Now while the inward power of sensation, as one of the ordinances of the Almighty, is a subject worthy of deep contemplation, it is no less interesting to reflect on the five distinct channels through which this single faculty is brought into action - the touch, the taste, the smell, the sight, and the hearing.

The sense of touch appears in man to be able to obtain nearly all the information, with regard to external objects, which it is capable of receiving. Ina few instances, the lower animals surpass us in the delicacy of this sense. But in all these the sensibility of touch is limited to particular qualities, or confined within narrow bounds. The human hand, on the contrary, by its motions, the pliability and strength of the fingers, and their softness, is the most exten­sive and perfect organ of touch possessed by any animals.

‘It should he remarked, that this sense, like every other, admits of cultivation and development and that the extent of the information acquired through its agency, will be in proportion to the attention which has been bestowed upon it, the diligence with which observations have been accumulated, and the importance of the subjects upon which it has been employed.

The organs of taste are placed at the commencement of the apparatus of nutrition, and their assigned work is to test the quality of the food received, thereby giving warning lest any noxious substance be introduced into the stomach.

Man, indeed, employs the sense of taste far less decidedly in this manner than do most other animals ; he is omnivo­rous ; in the north he relishes train-oil and blubber, the blood of seals, and animal food half raw, while in tropical regions, he feeds upon boiled rice or other grain, seasoned with a little spice, and accounts it a luxury. In both cases, the taste is in accordance with the requirements of the system, placed under opposite circumstances.

Man, however, acquires by habit an artificial taste, and comes at last to relish things which he at first disliked, and in many instances these things are more or less injurious.

The sense of smell is intimately connected with that of taste ; indeed, it is a powerful auxiliary to it ; nevertheless, savage people, in whom the sense of smell is far more acute than in civilized races, do not appear to possess a greater refinement of taste. Many animals, as we have seen, possess the sense of smell in far greater perfection than man, and are evidently influenced by it in their choice or rejection of food.

The degree of enjoyment which we obtain as rational and intellectual beings through the eye is very great. By it we revel in the beauties of nature, which have been so all-bountifully strewed around us ; by it we investigate the structure and formation of the various productions of life ; through it we form an intellectual acquaintance with the past, and dive into the future ; by it we search out the hidden treasures of wisdom and of knowledge ; by it we determine the route of our own locomotive conduct ; and by it we investigate through the countenance, the character of those with whom we are placed in contact, and obtain lessons for our own safety and guidance.

When we look to the use which man has made of his eye, and the machines which he has invented, arising out of his knowledge of this optical structure, - and when we estimate the wonders unveiled by the telescope and the microscope, our minds are filled to overflowing with a realization of the wisdom and goodness of the great Creator.

FIG: THE TELESCOPE.

The Eye-glass C-D has a greater magnifying power than the object-glass, A-B ; this is the reverse of the microscope. The inverted images m-n, of the distant object M-N is formed in the focus of the object glass A-B. In a telescope of this construction the object is seen in an inverted position. Two additional lenses are placed in it in order to accommodate it to land objects.

THE MICROSCOPE.

Here the lens B is called the object-glass, and the lens C the eye-glass. The two lenses produce a double magnifying power ; a1-b1 is the image of the object a-b formed by the lens B ; this image being in the focus of the lens C is further magnified by this lens and this second enlarged image is seen by the eye at a2-b2. In the microscope the magnifying power of the object-glass should always be greater than the magnifying power of the eye-glass.

Hearing is the most intellectual of the senses. It is to the ear that the conversation of ordinary life is addressed ; the directions, the requests, the commands that we continually issue forth or receive - words of congratulations, consolation, encouragement, or information – the eloquence of the senate or the bar – the strenuous admonitions or exhortations of the preacher.

What a wonderful thing the mind of man is, that a few atmospheric vibrations on the auditory nerves, or a few pictures on the retina, should produce sorrow or joy, hope or fear - should communicate instruction or pleasure - should excite sympathy or love, contempt or aversion!

The dog, the horse, the antelope, and numerous other lower animals, have quicker ears than man but it is in the mind that the difference lies ; with a weaker sight than is usual, with a more imperfect hearing than is ordinary, sages and philosophers, and historians and poets, have left to posterity the brightest productions of mental power. Homer and Milton were blind.

IN Salzman’s gymnastics there is a very interesting chapter on the “Exercise of the Senses.” We quote some examples from it, and refer to the work for further illustrations.

The eyes are to be blindfolded in going through the following exercises on touch: -1. Discover persons by feeling them. 2 Distinguish coins. 3. Tell what a person writes on his hand with a pencil, or the point of a skewer. 4. Distinguish the leaves of trees and plants. 5. Estimate the degree of heat of air, water, &c . according to the thermometer. 6. Distinguish plates of polished metal, of similar figure, by their specific heat. 7. Estimate the weight of various substances in pounds, ounces, and small weights. 8. Tell all kinds of wood, and the different productions of the loom. 9 Estimate the number of leaves, and tell the pages of a book, &c.

The sight. – 1 Let the pupil distinguish all kinds of distant objects, and describe them. 2. Let him read out of a book at an unusual distance, or distinguish small objects, as pieces of wood, different kinds of cloth, &c. 3.Let him estimate every relation of magnitude as it exists – length, breadth, height, depth, superficies, solidity, and distance; to be verified by actual measurement. 4. Let him draw all kinds of mathematical figures, without compasses or ruler, - rectangles, angles of a given number of degrees, triangles, circles with their centers, &c; to be afterwards examined with instruments, and the errors corrected. 5. Let him estimate the weight of various bodies by sight alone. 6. Stopping his ears with his fingers, let him hold a conversation with a person by observing the motion of his lips.

Hearing. - Music obviously one of the most elegant exercises for the ear; it is to be regretted, however, that it is much too tedious for young persons.* The well-known musical play of commands, in which they are directed what to do by the notes of the piano, is very amusing ; but it is more an exercise of reflection and invention, then of the sense of hearing. That species of blindman’s buff in which the person blindfolded is to guess whom he has caught by the slightest sound of his voice, is better but the following exercise is best calculated for the purpose.

* We do no agree with Salzman that the notes of music are tedious to young persons. We know many instances where the contrary can be shown ; and we hope the time is approaching when music will be as universal as it is an elegant recreation.

The youthful company, in which the fewer there are the less noise is to be apprehended, being all blindfolded, their master will do various things, and they must tell what he is about ; in other words, he will make a variety of noises, and they must explain the agency and the object employed in producing them.

All common actions, as walking, writing, making pens, and the like are soon discovered. Accordingly, the master will proceed to such as are more unusual ; for instance, stepping on a chair, sitting down upon the ground, &c. Still these will be found with tolerable facility, and then he will go farther. He will give them to conjecture the figure, size and substance of things, by the ear. For example, what it is they hear sound? A glass, a basin, a bell, a piece of iron, steel, copper, silver, wood ; the table, the bureau; of what size, or what shape is it ? &c.

Smell and Taste. - A person blindfolded may distinguish flowers, various articles of food, many metals, leaves of trees ; fresh, and, in many cases, dry pieces of wood; and several other substances, by the smell alone, without touching them ; and most of them by the taste likewise. Every one who has reflected on the functions of the senses, may multiply and refine experiments of this kind in a very extensive degree. Each, however, requires its particular method, to enlarge upon which here would carry me too far ; at the same time that it will occur readily to the reflecting mind.

One of the most general rules in these exercises of the senses is, to proceed in a method directly time reverse of the natural employing first that sense, the impressions of which, are the slightest. For example : the person being blindfolded, a piece of paper is the subject of his inquiry. We begin with its qualities ; I hold it before his nose to try whether he can smell it. If he cannot while it is dry I moisten another piece of the same paper and then, perhaps, his nose will be sensible of the odour. If he now say ‘It is paper;’ I answer, perhaps, ‘Do not judge too hastily,’ in order to keep him in a state of uncertainty, that his other senses may perform their part.. I recommend him to appeal to the evidence of his hearing, and pass the point of my finger lightly over the paper, or let it fall gently on the ground. If he say ‘Yes, it is paper;’ I reply, ‘May it not be parchment, or a large dry leaf?’ Thus I render him uncertain again to excite his attention. I now roll up a small ball of it, moisten it with water, and let him taste it. He will now affirm with more positiveness that it is paper. I say, ‘Make yourself more certain of it,’ and let him feel the paper; on which he is pleased to find that he did not mistake. I permit him, however, to feel a small part of it only between finger and thumb, that he may not obtain any knowledge of its size, which is the next object of inquiry. I let it fall to the ground several times, draw the edges of it between my fingers, and leave him to guess the size of the paper from the sound. In a little practice he will be able to distinguish an octavo leaf from a quarto. I now give him the piece that he may tell be its size in inches, and describe its figure. He passes his finger carefully round the whole of the edge, and tells me both these. If its figure be such as not to admit of a precise verbal description, I desire him to retain it accurately in his memory, as I shall require him to delineate it after his eyes are unbound. I now inquire concerning the colour of the paper. The possibility of acquiring an immediate idea of this by the touch, is more that doubtful ; but probably he will infer it from the density of the paper ; at least he will be able in time to discover whether it be white, brown, or blotting paper ; stained, printed, written upon, or blank. Here the examination ends. I put away the paper; he draws its figure, without having seen it ; and we now compare the drawing with the paper, and prove the accuracy of the other senses by he eye.

Hitch – a catch, stoppage, or impediment of any kind.
Malady – a disease of the mind or body.
Vis medicatrix naturae – the healing power of nature.
Versatility – changeable, variable.

PERFECT health consists in the uninterrupted action, and perfect balance of all the functions of the body - this involving of course perfection of structure; the slightest pain or ache must be indicative of a hitch somewhere in the machinery.

In this view, perhaps none are free from disease for a day, for few can boast of such perfect undeviating health as to pass four-and-twenty hours without some slight twinge of pain, without some ache or weariness to remind them that their bodies are mortal ; and from this slightest passing uneasiness, to the confirmed and fatal malady, disease passes through every gradation.

Many of the most painful and deadly disorders are not more felt at their commencement than as a slight sense of discomfort, and perhaps numberless of the lesser pains felt daring what is considered health, might pass on to real disease, were it not for the natural tendency to cure with which our bodies are endowed ; that which is called the “vis medicatrix naturae;“ the same tendency which restores the fractured bone to soundness, and heals the wound.

The animal system is no like a clock or steam-engine, which, being broken, you must send to the clockmaker, or engineer to mend it ; and which cannot be repaired otherwise. The living machine, unlike the works of human invention, has the power of repairing itself ; it contains within itself its own engineer, who for the most part, requires no more than some very slight assistance at our hands. This truth admits, indeed, of a very large application. If the arts of medicine and surgery had never been invented, by far the greater number of those who suffer from bodily illness would have recovered nevertheless. An experienced and judicious medical practitioner knows this very well, and considers it to be his duty in the great majority of cases not so much to interfere by any active treatment, as to take care that nothing should obstruct the natural process of recovery, and to watch lest, in the progress of the case, any new circumstance should arise which would make his active interference necessary.

Every medical man must have met with cases of illness in which the patient seemed, as it were, resolved not to give in - seemed, even under favourable circumstances, determined not to die, if he could help it, and did not die ; even when the physical powers tended to death the mind tended to life, and the mind succeeded.

Were it not for the tendency to health, or to cure, existing in the body, medicines would be in vain, and he is the best physician who can detect these tendencies to recovery, permit them to act when they seem strong enough, and assist them when they do not.

The patient in the lowest stage of fever, still has the tendency to health existing, and acting within, and battling with the disease; the powers of a good constitution may of themselves be sufficient to conduct him over the crisis ; but they may not; and unassisted, the patient must sink ere the tendency to throw off the disease gets the mastery; but the physician steps in, he gives his help to the constitution; his wine, and bark, and nourishment, and regulation of the functions, support the frame till the struggle is over, and the disease is vanquished.

A knowledge of the circumstances on which health depends, is of especial value. Without a certain degree of health, all other advantages are unable to confer happiness. The condition of the body is intimately connected with that of the mind ; and it is a truth too much disregarded, that the most valuable intellectual attainments and moral qualities can produce their full and legitimate results, both upon the individual possessing them and upon others, only when the physical powers are fully developed, and by proper training, rendered the fit instruments of the mind.

It is forgotten, also, that the mental qualities themselves depend greatly upon those of the body ; and that when the latter is affected, the former is generally involved in its misfortune so that in reality, physical education is an essential part of mental education. This important truth is now beginning to be recognised; and we may confidently look forward to the time when how to take care of his health will be one of the leading parts of the moral and intellectual education of man.

Many of the most popular rules for preserving health have been declared fallible and precarious, but this is to be attributed in some measure to the difficulty of applying them to individual oases, for of all the creatures of God with which we are acquainted, man is the most exposed to change of condition, and the most capable of corresponding alterations in character and practice. Just in proportion to the scope of his rational and moral faculties are the versatilities of his
constitution, and the variations in his way of life.

It is the law of his nature in a pre-eminent degree, that one stage of his being should serve as a preparation for another. On a protracted and regulated infancy depends a healthy and happy boyhood; an a boyhood well-governed and instructed, the rigour and virtue of early maturity ; on that rigour and virtue the usefulness and stability of middle life; and on these again, the comfort and tranquility of age. Above all, under the mercy and grace of God, the present life rightly spent, is a pathway to the holiest place of all - a preparation for the glory and bliss of heaven.

Symmetrical - proportioned in all parts.
Malformation - badly formed, deformed.
Rheumatism - a painful disease affecting the muscles and joints of the body.
Paralysis - loss of the power of voluntary motion in any part of the body.
Hereditary - transmitted from forefathers.
hospitium, jus hospitii - the right of receiving hospitality from those to whom we have been hospitable.

DEFORMITY means any and every deviation from the recognised symmetrical proportions of the human frame but the word is more definitely applied to those irregularities of form which consist in a partial deviation from the natural position of the body, unaccompanied by malformation of the general original structure. It is probable that to a conviction on the part of the profession that club-feet are actual malformations, we are to ascribe the unaccountable fact of this species of distortion having until very recently been left without rational or truly scientific attempts made to remedy
it. Deformities are either congenital - that is, dating from birth - or acquired.

In non-congenital cases, teething, worms, and irritations of the spinal chord, are frequent causes. Certain occupations, such as much standing, or carrying heavy loads; position, also, may be regarded as a cause, especially in lateral curvature of the spine; but occasionally we are at a loss to discover any cause, the deformity coming on insensibly, while the patient is apparently in perfect health.

These cases, if attended to at their commencement might certainly be relieved and prevented, but it often unfortunately happens that there is little interference with the general health; the deformity, as in the foot for instance, coming on insidiously, no attention is paid to the circumstance; a weakness, as it is termed, of the ankle is felt, and the foot deviates occasionally from its natural position, and thus, if the ease be neglected, the foundation is laid for a permanent deformity, or at all events a permanent weakness of one or both limbs, which may involve their being disabled for life.

Deformity occurs from the softened condition of the bones, in the disease of childhood named ricketts, and also from softening of the bones in adults, but these cases are the effect of distinct and well-marked diseases.
Deformities and contractions of the shoulder and elbow-joint are very generally the result of injury or disease. The wrist-joint and the joints of the fingers are also liable to distortion from the same cause ; in some eases the contraction is seated in the skin, in others the joints are deformed and perhaps displaced by rheumatic disease. Deformity of the fingers may also be congenital.

The power of hereditary tendency towards certain forms of disease, such as scrofula and consumption, gout, and rheumatism, paralysis, &c., is so generally recognised as to be a matter of popular information, that is to say, when these diseases have affected parents, or relatives of parents, they are regarded as hereditary in descendants; there is, however, a hereditary predisposition not so apparent, which requires more notice than it receives, it is that which devolves upon children in consequence of the habits of the parents.

If either parents have lowered the standard of health by dissipation or by any other means, their sins, in obedience to those laws which the Almighty has connected with our being, are visited upon the children, in tendencies to certain diseases. The offspring of drunkards are very frequently the subjects of affections of the brain and nervous system ; the child of the woman who gives way to indolence, or indulges in undue excitements, will in all probability fall below the standard of health.

Every day adds to our experience of the way in which the ill-ventilated and badly-drained dwelling causes the tendency to fever and to cholera, whilst at the same time it fosters their deadly germs into activity.

Institutions for the cure of defects and diseases have the strongest claims on the sympathy of the wealthy. Not only are such claims founded on the ground of charity and benevolence, but also on self-interest; for it is an undeniable fact that the doer of a good act eventually reaps his reward. Institutions which bring the poor to them in order to obtain relief from pain or other bodily infirmity lead their medical officers to an amount of knowledge which they could not have acquired without such experience; which information is not only applied afterwards for the benefit of the poor themselves, but also for the highest and most dignified personages in the State.

“Before the introduction of Christianity,” says Dr. Arnott, “hospitals were unknown. Among the most polished nations of antiquity, the Greeks and Romans, it is in vain to seek either in their annals or in the remains of their once proud cities, for a trace not only of hospitals, such as now exist, but of any charitable institutions for the reception of the poor, the orphan, and the sick.

“After the introduction of that religion which looks upon all men as equal, and which inculcates charity as a duty, its disciples at an early period contrived a scheme for the assistance of their necessitous brethren ; but this did not until the fourth century, assume the form of institutions for their reception.

“As there were then no inns for the accommodation of strangers when in foreign countries, or at a distance from home, it was usual for travellers of that nation (the Roman), to be received at the houses of certain persons, whom they in their turn entertained at home. The connexion they established was considered an intimate one, it was styled ‘hospitium jus hospitii.’ The former term was also applied to the reception of a stranger, and to the house or apartments in which he was entertained; and the Roman nobility used to erect the latter, called hospitalia, on the right and left ends of their houses, with separate entrances. From these our ‘hospital’ is derived.”

Piety and benevolence impelled many individuals to appropriate a part of their property to religious and charitable purposes and this good example being followed, from patriotic and benevolent motives, hospitals of various kinds were founded in most of the civilized nations of Europe. The great advantages arising to the public from well regulated institutions of this kind can be easily understood and appreciated.

Epidemic - attacking numbers of people in a locality at the same time.
Endemic - among the people. the
Cutaneous - affecting the skin, or belonging to it.
Catarrh - a cold, attended with increased secretions from the nose and fauces.
Pulmonary - affecting the lungs.
Intermittent - ceasing at intervals.
Aeration - combination wills air.
Syncope - fainting.
Asphiaxia - a cessation of the beating of the pulse caused by suffocation.
Coma - insensibility, with loss of speech and motion.
Vertigo - dizziness, or swimming in the head.
medulla oblongata - the upper part of the spinal marrow.
Apoplexy - loss of sense and voluntary motion.

MANY of the manufacturing employments are carried on in confined, unwholesome atmospheres, rendered nauseous and putrid from the filth of the workshops, from exhalations of the people employed, and from the effluvia of the substances worked with or upon, as oils, sizes, mercury, lead, paint ; in some there is excessive heat, as in glass-houses, smelting- works, foundries, &c. By the sedentary nature of some occupations action and exercise of the body are prevented, while the forced and unnatural positions of the body required in other trades, impede those functions which are necessary to life and health.

Many diseases have their foundation in the particular state of the several organs and their functions, it follows therefore that these diseases may be inherited; and, in fact, it has been observed, that the son is not unfrequently attacked by a disease at the same period of life in which his father was. These diseases are called hereditary; but it is only the predisposition to them that is, properly speaking, inherited. Hence the actual development of hereditary diseases requires certain co-operating circumstances.

EPIDEMIC DISEASE signifies, a state of sickness which prevails in a place or tract of country only for a temporary period. An epidemic always originates in transient external influences, which gradually produce such changes in the bodily system, as finally bring on the sickness. Thus many diseases appear to arise from some peculiar morbid matter in the atmosphere, brought by particular winds; as the influenza, and other diseases: also poor or scanty food, unwholesome mixtures, &c., may occasion epidemics.

Seasons of scarcity, which compel men to have recourse to unusual means of subsistence often occasion epidemics. Causes producing a disturbed state of mind, such as war, sieges, earthquakes, &c., by their effects on the nervous system, also favour the production of epidemic diseases, or render them more malignant.

The name ENDEMIC is often applied to diseases which attack the inhabitants of a particular district or country, and have their origin in some local cause, as the physical character of the place where they prevail, or in the employments, habits, and mode of living of the people. Every part of the world, every climate, and every country, has its peculiar endemics. Thus the tropical and warm climates are subject to peculiar cutaneous disorders, and eruptions of various kinds, because the constant heat keeps up a strong action of the skin, and draws the humours to the surface of the body. In northern climates, eruptions of the skin occur, but they are of a different kind. Thus in all the north polar countries, especially in Norway, a kind of leprosy is prevalent, arising from the coldness and humidity of the climate, which dispose the skin to such disorders.

Hot and moist countries generate the most violent typhus and putrid fevers; the West Indies and Some of the American seaports, for instance, produce the yellow fever. Places in a more dry and elevated situation, northern countries particularly, are peculiarly subject to inflammatory disorders. In countries and districts very much exposed to currents of wind, especially in mountainous places, we find at all seasons of the year, rheumatisms, catarrhs, and the whole train of complaints which have their origin in a sudden stoppage of the functions of the skin.

In large and populous towns, we meet with the most numerous instances of pulmonary consumption. In places that are damp, and at the same time not warm, as in marshes and near the larger rivers, intermittent fevers are prevalent. Diseases which are endemic in one country, may also appear in others, and become epidemical, if the weather and other physical influences resemble those which are the causes of the endemic in the former place; the climate being for a time transferred, as it were, from one to the other.

All individual vital action is essentially temporary in its nature; and every living thing, whether a simple moss, an oak, a worm, or a man, must die. The material elements that form our structure lose their power of exercising those peculiar vital actions that characterised them, yield to putrefaction and serve to furnish food, for plants.

Two general conditions are essentially necessary to be present in order that life may be continued in an individual, - the circulation of the blood, and the exposure of the same blood to the air. Now it is evidently one of the intentions of Nature, that by diseases, or by that rare malady, old age, obstacles should be put to this circulation of the blood and its aeration. It is these stoppages that terminate our existence in this world. They are the causes of that which we instinctively dread, which we drive so from our thoughts, and which we strive so to avert: they are the causes of Death.

There are three ways in which people die. When the blood will not circulate, - and this way of dying is called fainting or syncope. When the air cannot get to the lungs, - and this is called choking or asphyxia. And, when we do not know that we ought to try to breathe, - and this is called stupor or coma.

One of the most striking illustrations of death by syncope is to be seen in cases where a very large blood-vessel is wounded, and when, to use the popular phrase, the person “bleeds to death.” The blood does not. circulate, for the very best of all reasons, there is none left to circulate in the body. But the blood may cease to exist in the blood-vessels from another cause than from the blood being taken cut by a wound. The body is always abstracting support from the blood. If, then, the daily supply of new materials to the blood be cut off the blood diminishes in quantity, and by-and-by, death by syncope comes on. The most perfect example of a death brought on in this manner is in a case of death by starvation.

Further, if the quantity abstracted daily from the blood be greater than the digestive organs can, even if acting pretty well, make up for, although death is not, as in the case of bleeding to death, sudden and instant, it is as certain, and is brought about in the same manner. In this way, people often die in cases of dysentery, and other exhausting and lingering disorders.

The simplest illustration of death, in the way of choking or asphyxia, is witnessed when a mechanical obstacle around, or in the windpipe obstructs the passing of air to the lungs. The sensations, for a moment or so at first, are extremely painful, - absolute agony; but this soon ceases, and the feeling becomes, it is believed, not painful at all : then there is vertigo, and this is followed by total unconsciousness. If, however, the obstruction to the air getting at the lungs comes on by degrees, none of the above violent and distressing symptoms are to be seen.

Death in the way of asphyxia, but produced in a slower manner, is common. Many diseases of the lungs, as inflammation, consumption, &c., render these organs quite unable to perform their functions, and induce death in this way.

The last way in which people die is by coma, or stupor. The reason we inspire, or breathe, is because the venous blood in the lungs gives rise to a sensation which is transmitted to the medulla oblongata by means of nerves; and that whenever this sensation is experienced, the movements that take a supply of air into the lungs are made. If, from the medulla oblongata being diseased, this impression is imperfectly felt, only imperfect attempts at breathing are made ; and if this impression be not felt at all, no attempts whatever are made to breathe. When such is time case, the individual so affected is said to die in the way of coma.

In water in the head, apoplexy and fatal cases of diseases of the brain, the death is usually in the way of coma.

In the gradual decline of the seasonal faculties, and the consequent diminution both of mental and of physical sensibility in advanced age, we cannot fail to recognise the wise ordinances of a superintending and beneficent providence, kindly soothing the path along which we descend the vale of life, spreading a narcotic mantle ever the bed of death, and giving to the last moments of departing sensation the tranquility of approaching sleep.

Physiological - relating to the science and functions of living beings.
Adolescence - the state between childhood and full growth.
Maximum - the greatest quantity.
Municipal - relating to the affairs of a corporate town.
Policy - prudence & wisdom combined.

THE division of human life into periods is not an arbitrary distinction, but is founded on constitutional differences in the system, dependent on different physiological conditions. The periods of infancy, childhood, boyhood, adolescence, manhood, and old age, ore distinguished from each other by external characters, which are but outward signs of internal states.

In physiological condition, the infant differs from the child, the child from the boy, the boy from the man, and the adult from the old man, as much in physical strength as in mental power. There is an appointed order in which these several states succeed each other; there is a fixed time at which one passes into another. That order cannot be inverted; no considerable anticipation or postponement of that fixed time can be effected.

In all places and under all circumstances, at a given time, though not precisely at the same time in all climates and under all modes of life, infancy passes into childhood, childhood into boyhood, boyhood into adolescence, and adolescence into manhood.

In the space of two years from its birth, every infant has ceased to be an infant, and has become a child; in the space of six years from this period, every male child will have become a boy; add eight years to this time, and every boy will have become a young man; in eight years more, every young man will have become an adult man; and in the subsequent ten years, every adult man will have acquired his highest state of physical perfection.

But at what period will this state of physical perfection decline? What is the maximum time during which it can retain its full vigour? Is the maximum fixed? Is there a certain number of years in which by an inevitable law, every adult man necessarily becomes an old man? Is precisely the same number of years appointed for this transition to every human being? Can no care add to that number? Can no imprudence take from it?

Does the physiological condition or the constitutional age of any two individuals, over advance to precisely the same point in precisely the same number of years? Physically and mentally, are not some persons older at fifty than others are at seventy? And do not instances occasionally occur in which an old man, who reaches even his hundredth year, retains as great a degree of juvenility as the majority of those who attain to eighty?

If this be so, what follows? One of the most interesting consequences that can be presented to the human mind. The duration of the periods of infancy, childhood, boyhood, adolescence, is fixed by a determinate number of years. Nothing can stay, nothing retard, the succession of each. Alike incapable of any material protraction is the period of old age.

It follows that every year by which the term of human existence is extended is really added to the period of mature age the period when the organs of the body have attained their fall growth and put forth their full strength; when the physical organization has acquired its utmost perfection when the senses, the feelings, the emotions, the passions, the affections, are in the highest degree acute, intense, varied ; when the intellectual faculties completely unfolded and developed, carry on their operations with the greatest vigour, soundness, and continuity; in a word, when the individual is capable of receiving and of communicating the largest amount of the highest kind of enjoyment.

The prolongation of the life of the people must become an essential part of family, municipal, and national policy. Although it is right and noble to incur risk, and to sacrifice life for public objects, it has always been felt that length of days is the measure, and that the completion by the people of the full term of natural existence is the ground-work of their felicity. For untimely death is a great evil.

What is so bitter as the premature death of a wife, - a child, - a father? What dashes to the earth so many hopes, breaks so many sweet alliances, blasts so many auspicious enterprises, as the unnatural death? The poets, as faithful interpreters of our aspirations, have always sung that in the happier ages of the world this source of tears shall be dried up.

Science, indeed, can scarcely apprehend all the results and all the modifications of society that would flow from the extension of life to its natural limit, nor perceive how all the violence, impurity, ignorance, and innumerable diseases which now destroy men can be dispersed. But science offers no justification to despair. When the great changes that have already been wrought in plants and animals of all kinds are considered, - and the infinite capacity of man, the extent to which his nature is modifiable, the probability that healthier parents will give birth to healthier offspring from generation to generation, - the mind is involuntarily disposed to listen with awakened expectations to the voice of the great prophet :-

“And the voice of weeping shall be no more heard, nor the voice of crying. There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days; for the child shall die a hundred years old; but the sinner being a hundred years old shall be accursed. And they shall build houses and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit: they shall not plant and another eat: for as the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands.” Isaiah lxv. 19 - 22.

Hindoo - an Aboriginal of Hindostan.
Esquimaux - Indians inhabiting the northwestern part of North America.
frigid zones - cold parts of the earth.
Gregarious - living in flocks or herds.
Herbivorous - feeding on vegetables.

NEARLY all kinds of sustenance have possessed either animal or vegetable life. Animal food is procured either by destroying wild animals, or by the rearing of flocks and herds. The inhabitants of the hotter parts of the earth eat but little animal food, and some of them live entirely on vegetables.

A Spanish peasant dines on bread, onions, and a little olive-oil, and he is as hardy and healthy as an Englishman who lives on bread, beef, and potatoes. The Hindoos are not allowed by their religion to slaughter animals, consequently they do not live on animal food. In tropical climates such food would cause too great an excitement, too rapid a circulation of the blood, and would bring on diseases.

On the contrary, the inhabitants of the polar countries live almost entirely on animal food; their only vegetables are lichens and the roots of certain kinds of rushes ; the Greenlanders and Esquimaux feed on the blubber of the whale and the flesh of the seal ; moreover the inhabitants of the frigid zones require that stimulus of animal food which would produce disease and death in a tropical

[FIG 49. Lichen islandica.]

In our own kingdom a great difference prevails in the amount of animal food consumed in its three principal divisions. Englishmen are accustomed to a large supply of animal food; the poorer Irish to potatoes and buttermilk while the Scottish peasant consumes a greater proportion of oatmeal than any other food.

Three species of animals, oxen, sheep, and swine, furnish the principal amount of animal food which is consumed by man in his civilized state. In all countries certain wild animals are hunted and slain for food. The flesh of wild animals is generally darker coloured, and formed of tougher fibres than that of domestic animals, and contains more nutriment.

Although the inhabitants of very warm climates live principally and often entirely on vegetables, in the colder climates animal food usually makes a part of the daily sustenance of all who are not oppressed by poverty; and nature has not only provided amply for this want, but has afforded the easiest means of supplying it.

The disposition of those animals which afford the great bulk of the supply that is required, as the sheep, the ox, and the swine, is such that they not only live gregariously, but are readily brought under obedience, so as to be inoffensive either to the person or property of man : and their docility in this respect is particularly worthy of our attention. M. Frederic Cuvier, observes that herbivorous animals are not, as is generally supposed, naturally more mild and tractable than the carnivorous; in fact they are by nature less mild and tractable.

Of the animals which supply us with food, the flesh or muscular fibre is that part which is most acceptable to the palate: and it is worthy of consideration that the flesh of those animals of whose living services we stand hourly in need, as the horse and the dog, is so unpalatable that we are not tempted to eat them unless in eases of dreadful necessity.

Air, moisture, and warmth, tend to the decay of all animal bodies; in order to resist this tendency, when it is necessary to keep flesh meat for any length of time, as in the ease of people living at a considerable distance from towns, on ship board, &c., recourse is had to the preservative qualities of salt. The application of salt to fresh meat causes the fibres to contract, and a certain quantity of the juice to flow from it, the meat is consequently lessened in bulk, the pores are closed; and the entrance of atmospheric air is prevented; thus it is less liable to decay, but at the same time its nutritive properties are diminished.

At the present moment Great Britain presents a striking illustration of the influence of man in increasing the supplies of animal food. Fifty years ago sheep were not killed for mutton till they were four or five years old - now a superior maturity is obtained in two years, including more perfect symmetry in the animals, much less bone, and more flesh. A recent writer on this subject says, “although there is very little four year old mutton, there is much more good food. The legs are longer and rounder, the backs are flatter, and the ribs more hoop-like; the shoulders, too, have gained.”

This systematic improvement of sheep, as well as of all our other cattle dates back between eighty and ninety years, to the labour of a man whose name is a household word with the stock-breeders of France and Germany, and the United States as well as of England - Robert Bakewell. And thus our breeders and farmers, with the assistance of engineers, chemists, and merchants, have found out how to increase the supplies of mutton a hundred-fold without increasing the area of our island, an object of great importance to a population which had become double between 1801 and 1851, and which still goes on increasing. It must, however, be borne in mind that many thousands of oxen, calves, sheep, and pigs are imported from other countries annually for the purpose of food.

Soluble - capable of being dissolved or melted.
Fibrin - that part of the blond from which the fibres of the muscles ate formed.
Albumen - the chief constituent of all animal solids. The white of an egg is almost pure albumen, being combined only wins a little water, soda, and saline matter.
Gelatine - skin, tendons, bones, &c., dissolved; animal jelly. Gelatine is soluble in water, but not in alcohol.
Osmazome - the juice which gives the flavour to cooked meat.
Mucilage - a mixture of gum mad other matter resembling mucus.
Condiment - a seasoning.
Euphorbium - a gum resin obtained from a species of spurge, growing abundantly in, and exported from Ethiopia, and other parts of Africa.
Ipecacuan or ipecacuanha - the Spanish name of a nauseous vegetable, used as en emetic.

THE constituents of food are numerous; the principal part of the solid matter of animals is fibrin; which is that portion which remains of the flesh of animals after all the soluble portions have been removed by boiling. Fibrin has been thought to exist in some vegetables, particularly in the juice of the fruit of the papaw tree, and in other plants with a milky juice, as the cow-tree of South America.

Albumen is another constituent of animal bodies, but of more sparing occurrence in vegetables, it is found in the blood, it constitutes the white of eggs; coagulated, it forms cartilage, horn, hair, and the nails, and hoofs of animals; it is the chief constituent part of oysters, mussels, snails, &c. Milk is an albuminous fluid, it is solidified by some acids, such as that of the gastric juice.

Gelatine abounds in animal substances, more in young than in old animals: the gravy of calves easily gelatinizes, while that of beef rarely does so. Gelatine exists in the bones, ligaments, tendons, membranes, skin, muscles, as well as in a portion of the horns of animals. It is a distinct substance from vegetable jelly, and is not common in the vegetable kingdom.

Osmazome is the principle to which meat owes its sapid flavour when dressed; it is probably confined to the animal kingdom, though a substance analogous to it is found in mushrooms. This principle exists sparingly in young and white meats, but is abundant in animals of which the flesh is red; the hare and different kinds of game, having dark-coloured flesh, possess the most osmazome, and are consequently much esteemed by those who like savoury food.

Gluten, vegetable albumen, gum, mucilage, and jellies of fruits, sugar, and starch are the chief constituents of vegetable food; besides which, many condiments are used which render the food more agreeable to the palate, and some of which promote digestion.

In addition to the flesh of the mammalia, birds of different kinds supply man with a large amount of animal food. Some are domesticated and reared around the habitations of man, others are wild birds which are snared or shot in large numbers at certain seasons of the year. The supply of eggs which birds furnish is also vast; for besides those obtained in England, upwards of a hundred millions are imported every year, most of them from France, besides a great supply from Ireland.

Fish not only furnish us with abundance, but with a great variety of animal food. The cod, salmon, mackerel, herring, and pilchard fisheries employ thousands of fishermen; and furnish occupation to many people in salting, smoking, packing, and carrying them to market.

The coasts of Labrador, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia are the chief localities of the cod-fisheries. The mackerel is abundant on all parts of the British coast. In spring, and early in summer, many boats and last-sailing cutters are employed in it; 100,000 mackerel are sold in the London market every week during a good season.

The herring is found on almost all our coasts, but it is more abundant in some parts than in others; it is said that 12,000 boats and 60,000 fishermen are employed in the herring fishery alone. The pilchard fishery is chiefly on the coasts of Devonshire and Cornwall. Salmon are taken in most of the large rivers of Great Britain and Ireland; but the chief supply is obtained from the larger rivers of Scotland, and those of the north of Ireland. Above 2,000,000lbs of salmon are annually sent from Scotland to the London market.

In the animal kingdom, all those species which serve extensively for food, - as oxen, sheep, and swine among quadrupeds ; the turkey, the common fowl, and the duck among birds; and the salmon, the cod, the herring, &c;. among fish - are either naturally of a gregarious nature, or are easily kept together, by human means in large bodies; and, therefore, are much better adapted for the supply of food to man than if they were either solitary, or scattered into small groups.

And so it is with respect to the common favourites of the vegetable kingdom, the rice, potato, wheat, &c ; they are capable of being cultivated gregariously, as it were, with little labour and attention. Thus in our own, and other European countries, the daily labourer, after his hours of hired work for others, can cultivate his own private field of wheat or of potatoes, with very little additional expense of time or trouble.

Another analogy may be observed with reference to the palate. The taste of the flesh of those species which constitute to man the staple, as it were, of animal food, is acceptable to most palates, and is neither so rich as soon to cloy the appetite, on the one hand, or invite it to luxurious indulgence on the other; nor yet so devoid of flavour as to deter us from taking a proper quantity.

And is it not the same with respect to those vegetable species, which are among the most ordinary and most necessary articles of our food? If corn, and the potato, and the cocoa-nut, had the pungency of euphorbium, the nauseating quality of ipecacuan, the heat of pepper, or the lusciousness of sugar on the one hand, or the insipidity of chalk on the other ; what an undertaking it would be to satisfy the craving of hunger with any one of those vegetables.

Animal food is distributed, in all parts of the earth of the quality and in the proportions required for its inhabitants, while, such supplies are both increased and varied by the enterprise and activity of man. Thus we improve our horses by Arabian breeds, and our pigs and poultry by the introduction of those of China. The natural distribution of animals is in accordance with their organisation and habits, while the appetite of man accommodates itself to the food thus placed within his reach. The Esquimaux devours several pounds of flesh in a day, he has it in that of the walrus, a species of coarse beef, and in the seal; the Englishman is content, on an average, with half a pound a day, nature and art combined, have provided it of a quality suitable to his more refined palate.

There need be no apprehension of: the supply of human food falling short; it has been shown over and over again that the advances in agricultural science, including the artificial feeding of animals, the adaptation of manures to soils, the extension of drainage and other improvements in cultivation and implements, will produce such supplies of both animal and vegetable food as will more than keep pace with any demands arising from the increase of population.

Casein - a component of milk and an ingredient in cheese.
Leguminous - belonging to the pea and bean tribe.
Hydrogen - a colourless combustible gas which, with oxygen, forms water.
Carbonaceous - of the nature of carbon.
Nitrogen - a gas without colour, taste, or smell, forming the largest component part of atmospheric air.
Cruciform, cruciferous - shaped like a cross.
Esculent - eatable.
Alimentary - belonging to food or nourishment.
Succulent - juicy, soft, full of moisture.
Exotic - foreign, not native to a country.

VEGETABLES form the primary source of sustenance to every thing that lives. The chief constituents of vegetable food have been already mentioned. Gluten abounds in the flour of wheat, barley, and oats. Albumen exists in many vegetables, as the cauliflower, asparagus, turnip, &c. Casein is found in several vegetables, especially in the leguminous seeds - beans, peas, &c., it is the same substance which separated from the milk of animals, forms cheese.

Gum is produced in many plants, often in a soft state, it is then called mucilage ; it exudes from cracks or incisions of the bark of some trees ; in the gooseberry, currant, orange, &c., this principle is called vegetable jelly. Sugar is found in the sap of many plants from which it is separated for purposes of diet as from the sugar-cane, beet-root, maple, grape, and some palms.

Starchis abundant in plants; it is separated for use from the potato, wheat, arrow-root, sago, and others. Oils are yielded by many vegetables ; the almond, nut, rape, cocoa—-nut, &c. give large quantities. Oil, in one shape or other, enters largely into the diet of man ; in consequence of the large quantity of hydrogen which it contains, in addition to its carbon, it is capable of sustaining the animal heat; hence it forms the principal part of the food of the inhabitants of polar regions.

Certain of the secretions of plants contribute to the development of animal heat, these are called carbonaceous secretions - carbon being their characteristic element - they consist of starch, sugar and oil; other secretions of plants assist in building up the animal frame, as albumen, gluten, and casein ; these secretions contain nitrogen, in addition to carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, which other plants possess, and they are called nitrogenous secretions; their special use being the nutrition of the body.

So important is nitrogen to the animal economy, that it is found impossible to sustain life in men or animals by food which is devoid of this principle, however large the supply.

The brassica, or cabbage belongs to the numerous family of cruciferous plants ; the turnip, mustard, sea-kale, radish, and many others are of this family; however different in certain properties they have all cruciform blossoms. Many plants of this family are esculent, none are poisonous. In their fresh state, they either contain a portion of nitrogen ready formed, or have the power of detaching it from the atmosphere, when they begin to undergo decomposition. This quality displays itself sooner in the leaves than in the roots, and to it is owing the very unpleasant odour of the water in which cabbages have been boiled.

The great variety of our cabbages, cauliflowers, and turnips are natives of our soil improved by cultivation from one or more species of wild cabbage, which in their natural state have poor, woody bitter stems, and leaves, and spindle-shaped roots.

Of the plants yielding starch, none are more important than the potato; but its value at the
present day is not so much given to it by the starch it contains, as by the small quantity of nitrogenous matter which is found in it. In estimating the potato as an article of diet, its composition should always be taken into consideration, and this will point out the fact, that although potatoes have been used as a substantive article of diet by man, they stand very low in their nutritionary power, and that starch is their distinguishing alimentary secretion.

Drs. Lindley and Playfair found, that, upon the average, an adult Irish peasant ate not less than fourteen pounds of potatoes every day. It thus becomes a question as to whether this tuber is the economical food it has been so often represented. Whether, however, it he a desirable article as a principal diet or not, there can be no question of its advantage as an adjunct to a food containing the flesh of animals.

[FIG 51. Cruciform Plants.]

All the fine varieties of the potato have sprung from the small and bitter root of the wild potato, which has its native home on the sea-shore of Chili. The first potatoes, grown in Ireland were from tubers introduced by Sir Walter Raleigh, who brought the roots from Virginia to England. They were a welcome gift to Ireland, and a tradition exists that they were introduced into Lancashire by an Irish ship laden with the roots, being wrecked on that coast; the potato took root, spread far and wide, and in a short time Lancashire became famous for potatoes.

Although the seeds of the leguminous plants contain so much nutritive matter they are not under all circumstances the most nutritious food. This arises from the fact that casein is much less easily digested than fibrin or albumen. With animals, however, which can digest this substance, as the horse, the ox, &c., it is known that peas and beans are the very best diet they can have to enable them to perform their labour.
These remarks apply to the ripened seeds of the leguminosae, but extensive use is made both of the unripened fruits and seeds of these plants. Thus, Windsor beans and green peas are eaten before the seeds are ripe, and the fruit of the French bean is eaten while it is green. In this state the plants contain much less nitrogenous matter, and a much larger proportion of water than the ripe seeds.

It is not supposed that the onion is indigenous to Britain, but that it has been brought from warmer countries. In Egypt it is said to have a delicious flavour, while those of Spain and Portugal are larger, milder and more succulent than ours.

Celery is a native plant, good for nothing wild, growing by drains and ditches, where it is known by the name of smallage, but it is one of our best vegetables when cared for and cultivated.

[FIG 52. Celery. FIG 53. Smallage.]

The large and juicy Altringham carrot is the spindly root of the wild carrot luxuriously fed; the parsnip is of a similar origin.

The globe artichoke is a thistle, but its birthplace cannot be traced. The Jerusalem artichoke is a species of sunflower whose original home was Brazil.

[FIG 54. Artichoke FIG 55. Thistle.]

Asparagus is found wild in some parts of England, but it also comes from the East, and it is not known whether our garden beds are planted with improved British plants or with exotics; if the former, it is only one of the numerous vegetable transformations resulting from high culture with which our gardens abound.

Cerealia - plants producing grain. In heathen times, the Cerealia were solemn
feasts to Ceres.
Indigenous - produced naturally in a country.
Magendie - a French physician.
Estuary - an arm of the sea, or mouth of a river, where the tide meets the current, causing an eddy.

THE grain-bearing plants are all grasses, they are called cereal grasses, or cerealia; they all contain nitrogenous and carbonaceous secretions in varying proportions, and from their digestible and nutritious qualities combined, they are more extensively used as a diet by mankind than any other plants; they are all annuals, both in their stems and roots, the whole plants dying after the seed has fully formed and ripened, and sometimes before the ripening process has been fully accomplished.

The chief corn-plants, or cerealia, are wheat, rye, barley, oats, millet, rice, and maize. The tribe of cereal grasses, is not restricted to these seven genera, but includes numerous others, which if they are not equally employed as food, are neglected only on account of the smallness of their seeds.

[FIG 56. Rice-field.]

The presence of the corn-plants in any region of the earth attests that man is there in an advanced stage of civilization. In the sepulchres of the Egyptian kings, which were opened by the naturalists and other scientific persons who accompanied the French army to Egypt, was found the common wheat, in vessels which were so perfectly closed that the grains retained both their form and colour. The wheat, buried there for several thousand years, was a proof of the ancient civilization of Egypt, as convincing as the ruins of temples and the inscriptions of obelisks.

The corn-plants, such as they are found under cultivation, do not grow wild in any part of the earth, Wheat has been traced, indeed, in Persia, springing up in spots very remote from human habitation, and out of the line of the traffic of the natives; but this circumstance is far from proving that it is a production natural and ‘indigenous to Persia.

None of the cereal grasses, properly so called, were found in cultivation among the Mexicans when their country was first visited by Europeans. The foundation of the wheat-harvests in Mexico is said to have been three or four grains which a slave of Cortez discovered, in 1530, accidentally mixed with a quantity of rice.

The careful negro who preserved and made so advantageous a use of the few grains which a happy chance had thrown in his way, and which, in the hands of a careless or thoughtless person, would, with their future inestimable advantages, have been lost to his country, has not been thought worthy, doubtless because he was a negro, of having his name preserved.

The Spanish lady, Maria d’ Escobar, wife of Diego de Chaves, who first imparted the same blessing to Peru, by conveying a few grains of wheat to Lima, has been more fortunate. Her name, together with the means which she took for effecting her object, by carefully distributing the produce of successive harvests as seed among the farmers, has been gratefully preserved in the records of history.

Wheat may be sown on most soils, and it will keep good for many years. Maize or Indian-corn grows in warmer climates than wheat, and it is very largely used for human food as well as for feeding cattle and poultry. The greater part of the human race live upon rice ; in China, in India, and in the hotter parts of America it is the chief food of the vast population. Rice thrives best on a marshy soil or in water. The States of Carolina produce the best American, and Patna the best East Indian rice. Rice in the husk is called paddy.

[FIG 57. Wheat. FIG 58. Oats. FIG 59. Barley.]

Rye is neither so nutritious nor so well flavoured as wheat, but it will grow on poorer soils than wheat, and therefore it is grown where wheat is not grown; bread is made of it either alone, or mixed with wheat. Oats are grown chiefly for horses, but also for making into oatmeal.

The chief use of barley is for making ale, beer, and porter; formerly much barley-bread was eaten by the poorer classes in this country, and is now eaten in countries colder than England in which barley will grow and wheat will not. Pearl-barley for soups is also prepared from this grain.

[FIG 60. Rye.]

Millet is very little used in the British Isles; in India this grain is second only to rice ; in Egypt the millets surpass all other crops in importance, while in Western Africa they form the staff of life.

Much has been written on the nutritious value of the “whole meal” of wheat,, as compared with that of the fine flour; a summary of the conclusions arrived at is here given. The removal of the bran from the meal after grinding, by the process called bolting, is considered as a very serious injury to it, for the more carefully the bran has been separated the less nutritious is the meal, while, in an economical point of view, a heavy loss is incurred.

[FIG 61 Millet. FIG 62. Maize. FIG 63. Rice.]

It has been proposed to get rid of some of the objections to the use of whole meal, by grinding the bran and mixing it with fine flour. Bread thus made is of superior quality to wheaten bread from which the bran is wholly excluded.

Professor Daubeny, of Oxford, says, “The great importance attached to having bread perfectly white is a prejudice which leads to the rejection of a very wholesome part of the food, and one, which although not digestible alone, is sufficiently so in that state of admixture with the flour in which nature has prepared it for our use ;“ he adds, “ that according to the experiments of Magendie, animals fed upon fine flour died in a few weeks, whilst they thrived upon the whole meal bread.”

Dr. Robertson observes in his Treatise on Diet and Regimen, “The advantage of using more or less of the coverings of grain in the preparation of bread has often been urged on economical principles, there can be no doubt that a very large proportion of nutritive matter is contained in the bran and the pollard and these are estimated to contain about one-fifth part of the entire weight of the wheat grain.”

The principal components of wheat are starch, gluten (or fibrin) and fatty matter, the starch maintains the heat of the body, the fibrin builds it up, but among the minor constituents is phosphate of lime of which the bones of animals are composed ; so that these particles in the wheat are taken into the system, and had we not this small portion of phosphate of lime our bones would not acquire that hardness necessary to maintain their muscular fabric upon them.

This view is taken by Mr. Way, professor of chemistry at the royal agricultural college, Cirencester, who says, “ a young growing animal, whether a child or a colt, that is kept on food which lacks bone-earth (phosphate of lime) will have soft cartilaginous bones. Nature cannot substitute iron or any other mineral in the animal system, out of which to form hard strong bones.”

Certain situations in a country are favourable to certain productions. In England the more eastern counties are generally favourable to the growth of corn. If an irregular line be drawn on a map of England from Whitby in Yorkshire through half of the North Riding, continued by the western boundary of the East Riding to the estuary of the Humber, thence through the centre of Nottinghamshire, and Leicestershire, from North to South - thence westward to the estuary of the Severn, thence nearly southward to Lyme Regis in Dorsetshire, the country will be separated into two parts. On the east of this line are the chief corn-growing counties; the more western parts are the chief grazing counties of England, while the central portions from north to south contain most of the minerals, and are the chief seats of manufacture. This will give a good general idea of the agricultural, manufacturing, and cattle-feeding divisions, of the island.

Transitory - passing from one state into another.
Laboratory - a place where experiments are carried on.
fermentation - decomposition, with sensible internal motion, producing a change of properties in the substances fermented.
Maturation - the action of ripening.
Transportation - the act of conveying from one place to another.

FRUITS of every conceivable variety abound, from the wild sloe, the blackberry, and the bilberry, which the wayfarer, and the wanderer may gather unchecked, to the grape, the peach, and the pine-apple which are cultivated with much care and cost, in the artificial climates provided for them in the gardens of the wealthy.

The improvement of wild fruits has been an object of attention for ages, the result is, that the austere crab of our woods has been converted into the golden pippin, and many other excellent varieties of apples; and the native wild sloe has been changed into the numerous kinds of luscious plums which we now possess.

[FIG 64. Crab. FIG 65. Apple.]
[FIG 66. Sloe. FIG 67. Plum.]

Fruits are only of secondary importance as articles of diet in cold and temperate climates; they afford variety to the palate, but are not to be esteemed as substitutes for corn and animal food.

There are two facts relating to fruits which must not be passed over; because they must be regarded. as special arrangements of beneficence, whether the results belong to food, health, or pleasure. The most remarkable of these is the succession in which they have been appointed to appear.

What would have happened, had all plants produced their fruits at the same period, as we might have expected, knowing that heat is the cause of their production and of their ripening? They could not have been consumed; we should have been overwhelmed with them for one short period; and through the rest of the year we should have had none.

And accordingly where this arrangement is more purely conducive to pleasure, they have been commanded to appear in succession, so that as one vanishes, another is ready to supply its place. We profit by this even in our own short summer; it is more extensively the fact in tropical climates, where these productions are far more numerous, and their uses both to man and animals much greater.

The other fact alluded to, conduces to the same good ends. All fruits are not transitory or perishable, so as to demand immediate consumption. On the contrary, we find in them the greatest variety; from an immediate urgency to be used as soon as they are perfect, to a power of delay which enables us to preserve them through an entire year, till a new summer comes, to recommence the same round. And so admirably have the provisions for this been appointed, that many will not ripen on the parent tree; a fact which, familiar as it is, offers no small difficulty, both in vegetable and ordinary chemistry.

Where the constitution of the fruit is naturally durable, as in the date, for example, there is nothing to excite peculiar notice; but there is a contrivance in some of the perishable or truly summer fruits of the hot climates, which enables them not only to be preserved, but to be imported far and wide.

The lemon and the orange ripen at a distant time, without the aid of the parent tree, or the parent
climate; without light, and without heat; giving us, in the regions of snow, all that we could have derived from a tropical sun. In this little and strange laboratory citric acid is converted into sugar; and fermentation is prevented by means of an admirable mechanical structure, unnecessary for the perfection of the fruit itself or the maturation of its juice, but requisite to preserve it for transportation.

[ FIG 68. Cluster of Dates. FIG 69. Date tree.]

A further provision for preservation and transportation has been made though drying; most often, but not necessarily, demanding the assistance of art. Thus do the fig, and the date, and the grape almost preserve themselves; other fruits require but little aid from our industry while the means are thus pointed out by nature.

If Arabia would be uninhabited without the camel, so might it but for the date; while the properties of both equally are such as man would have given, had he possessed the power with the inventive faculty. The fundamental provision for this is found in sugar, a substance deserving peculiar notice, not only as an article of food, but because of its chemical properties.

Incapable of change itself, sugar preserves not merely vegetable, but even animal organizations from chemical destruction; and hence also, where nature has not added it to the fruits in sufficient quantity, art is enabled to supply it, with the same useful results, in modes which are as familiar as they are numerous.

Of fruits we have very few of home produce; even the commonest have been transformed out of all likeness with the original stock, partly by cultivation and partly by the introduction of foreign sorts; so that it can scarcely be said of any of them that they are purely native.

Gooseberries came originally from Siberia; currants, though indigenous, have been so re-crossed with stocks, from America, and the south of Europe, that it would be hard to say how much of native juice is left in them. Black currants are wholly American, and the pink or champagne are French.

Strawberries are indigenous, and are said to have been under cultivation ever since the time of Richard the Second. But John Tradescant the elder, who was gardener to Charles the First in 1629, and who knew every flower and herb and tree by heart, first saw the strawberry plant, cultivated and cherished in a woman’s garden, near Plymouth. Her little daughter had seen it growing wild in the woods, and had transplanted it to the home garden for the sake of its beautiful flower and fruit.

Raspberries are indigenous, too, but, like currants, have been crossed and cultivated, till little of the original is left. Bilberries are wild now, and ever have been; so are cranberries, but the best cranberries come from America; barberries are all over Europe, but they were not originally wild in England.

Pears came from the south of Europe to France, thence to England; so did the best kinds of apples, though we have our own native crab in its full perfection of sourness and indigestibility. The bullace is native and wild; so is the sloe; but the real ripe purple plum canoe from Asia to Europe, passing from Syria to Greece, thence to Italy, and from Italy everywhere. The greengage is French, - as, indeed, are most of the best varieties of every fruit.

Cherries are to be met with wild in England as in other parts of Europe, bat our best varieties came from Spain and France; and the finest we have are to be found in Kent, that most beautiful garden of England.

Apricots came from Armenia; Breda, Rome, and Turkey supplied us with our best kinds. Portugal sent us quinces; the south of Europe, Germany, and America, medlars; the East, peaches and nectarines.

The black mulberry came to the south of Europe from Persia; the white from Spain and the south of Europe generally; the paper mulberry from Japan, China and South Carolina. The white mulberry feeds the silkworm; it is the black which the old Flemish weavers have planted so thickly about London.

[FIG 70. Black mulberry.]

The olive comes from the south of Europe; and every one knows who first planted the vine, and where - with the fatal consequences thereof. The first fig-tree brought into England was supposed to have been one of the white Marseilles kind, planted by Cardinal Pole in the palace garden at Lambeth. The black fig-tree was first cultivated between 1500 and 1600.

Oranges and lemons passed from Asia to Southern Europe. Genoa was long our nursery for lemons; but Genoa had gone to Media for her first seeds; now we import oranges and lemons chiefly from Spain and Portugal.

As to nuts, the walnut is from southern Europe and America ; the hickory from America ; the hazel originally from Avellino, a town in Naples. Filberts came from Pontus; chestnuts were brought by the Romans from Sardis, in Lydia, to Italy. Our forefathers had but few nuts, they did not import cashew-nuts, Brazilian nuts and cocoa-nuts, but they had beech-mast which they shared with the swine, and they made the most of the wild hazel.

Fruit is digestible in proportion to its perfection, and hence the care to be observed with regard to ripeness. The drier fruits are adapted to cool and dry weather; the moister ones to the hotter. Fruit should be eaten in the early part of the day, and seldom late in the evening.

Saturate - to fill to fulness.
Evaporate - to pass off in vapour.
Putrefaction - decay of animal or vegetable substances.
Aromatic - spicy, fragrant, warm, and pungent.
Archipelago - a sea interspersed with islands.
Clou - clove - the flower pod of a tree, used as a spice.
Rhizomes - a thick stem running along and under ground.

NEXT to bread and water salt is one of the most important necessaries of life. Cheshire and Worcestershire supply most of the salt required in Britain. Double the quantity consumed in the kingdom is exported, chiefly to the United States, Canada, Belgium and Holland, Denmark, Russia, and Prussia.

Formerly salt was chiefly manufactured from sea-water; and Lymington, in Hampshire, was the chief seat of the manufacture; now it is made from natural brine springs, or from rock salt. In some cases fresh water is admitted into the mines of rock salt, it dissolves the salt, and the water being saturated with it, is changed into brine, which is pumped out of the mines, and boiled; the water evaporates, and the salt is left.

Salt imparts flavour to food, it pleases the palate, and it stimulates digestion. Mankind in all countries, and many of the inferior animals require it. Salt retards the putrefaction of animal and vegetable food, thus enabling man to preserve it for a longer time than he could otherwise do.

Fish is salted in such immense quantities as to form an important article of commerce between nations. There are many countries where salt has never yet been found, the inhabitants of which can only use it as a luxury. This is particularly the case in the interior of Africa.

Mungo Park in his travels says “It would appear strange to a European to see a child suck a piece of rock-salt as if it were sugar. This however, I have frequently seen; although the poorer class of inhabitants are so rarely indulged with the precious article, that to say a man eats salt with his provisions is the same as saying he is a rich man. I have suffered great inconvenience from the scarcity of this article. The long use of vegetable food creates so painful a longing for salt, that no words can sufficiently describe it.”

The plants which produce the more esteemed spices are all natives of tropical climates; and with the exception of some of the capsicums, none of them can be fruited in the open air in this country, nor can the choicer sorts be brought to maturity even by artificial heat. These substances are either simply hot and acrid, in which case they get the name of peppers, or they have aromatic flavour in addition; and when they have this aroma they are called spices.

Spices have always been regarded as luxurious acquisitions, while their small comparative bulk, and consequent facility of transport, caused them to be among the first articles of commerce obtained from remote countries. The inhabitant of more temperate regions has therefore, for ages, been in the enjoyment of most of the delicious aromatics fostered by a tropical sun.

The term spices applies to most dissimilar parts of plants - to barks, seeds, flowers, roots, &c.; the spices have all an agreeable, aromatic, and pungent flavour, rendering them useful in the preparation of certain kinds of food, which would be insipid without them. The region of spices is a very confined one; the islands forming the Indian Archipelago, are noted for the prevalence of the plants which produce these substances.

Ceylon is the chief locality of the cinnamon, a kind of laurel, but there are species of cinnamon, and also of cassia, another kind of laurel, found in other islands of the archipelago. Cinnamon is obtained from the inner bark of the young branches of the trees. Cassia is a similar spice, which, however, is more abundant and less delicate in its aroma than cinnamon.

[FIG 71. Cinnamon.]

Cinnamon formed one of the ingredients in the anointing oil used by Moses in sanctifying the holy things of the Tabernacle; - ” Take thou also unto thee principal spices, of pure myrrh five-hundred shekels, and of sweet cinnamon half so much, even two-hundred-and-fifty shekels, and of sweet calamus two-hundred-and-fifty shekels, and of cassia five hundred shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary, and of olive oil a hin.” (Exodus xxx. 23, 24.) We perceive from this quotation that many things were called spices which are not regarded as such in these days - the myrrh being a gum-resin, and the calamus a species of grass.

[FIG 72. Nutmeg.]

The nutmeg and mace are both obtained from a plant indigenous in the Molucca islands, afterwards eradicated there by the Dutch, and transferred to the Panda Islands, to which place its cultivation was confined, the trade being wholly in the hands of the Dutch. In 1802 a large number of nutmeg and clove plants were conveyed to Penang, Prince of Wales’ Island, where, although an exotic, it is cultivated with so much success, as to supply all our demands. The fruit of the nutmeg tree is nearly spherical, but it varies to almost the shape of an egg; when ripe it splits into halves showing inside the nutmeg inclosed in its thin membraneous covering of mace.

Cloves are produced by a species of myrtle, a native of the Molucca Islands, but which has been introduced with success into several parts of the East and West Indies. Cloves are the unexpanded flower buds of the tree, dried; they resemble a short thick nail, hence the name of the spice from the French c1ou.

[FIG 73. Cloves. FIG 74. Allspice.]

The Allspice, Pimento, or Jamaica Pepper is a native of Mexico and the West Indies. It flourishes spontaneously on the north side of the island of Jamaica. The fruit has an aromatic odour, and its taste combines that of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, hence its common name of allspice; the berries are gathered before they are quite ripe. This tree grows about thirty feet high; it has shining green leaves like those of the bay tree; even the leaf when bruised emits a fine aromatic odour.

In July and August a profusion of white flowers pleasingly contrasts with the dark green leaves, the whole forming an object of vegetable beauty rarely surpassed; while the rich perfume which is exhaled around, and which is wafted by the gentlest breeze, renders an assemblage of these trees one of the most delicious plantations of even a tropical climate.

Black pepper is obtained from the nearly ripe fruit of a climbing plant common in the East Indies, and of the simplest culture, being multiplied with facility by cuttings or suckers. The ripe fruit deprived of its outer covering by washing becomes white pepper. A small quantity of pepper is grown in the West Indies and America, and some kinds are produced in Africa. Long pepper, which is also used in this country, is extensively cultivated in many parts of India.

[FIG 75. Pepper. FIG 76. Capsicums. FIG 77. Ginger.]

Capsicum or chili consists of long tapering pods which are full of small whitish seeds; their principal use is to make Cayenne pepper; the consumption of capsicums in India is very large, as both the rich and poor daily use them to season their curries. They are ground into a paste between two stones with a little mustard, oil, ginger, and salt, and these form the seasoning with which the millions of poor people in India flavour their insipid rice.

Ginger is a native of the East Indies and of China; it also grows very well in the West Indies; it is imported in root-stalks called rhizomes from two to five inches in length; after these roots are dug up they are carefully scraped, and sometimes bleached. The finest kinds are obtained from Jamaica.

Various other plants yield substances which are used as condiments, as caraway, coriander, mustard, cummin, and anise seeds; all these with the exception of the two last are grown in England.

Pendulum - a rod which hangs and swings.
Mathematical - pertaining to the science which treats of whatever can be measured or numbered.
Vacuous - containing nothing.
Rectify - to make right, to correct.
Nutrition - the process by which animals and vegetables are fed and nourished.

DR. ARNOTT has given an amusing summary of the powers of the steam-engine, and of the objects on which it has been employed. He says, “In the present perfect state of the engine, it appears almost a thing endowed with intelligence. It regulates with perfect accuracy and uniformity the number of its strokes in a given time, and it counts and records them as a clock does the beats of its pendulum; - it regulates the quantity of steam admitted to work; - the briskness of the fire; - the supply of water to the boiler; - the supply of coals to the fire; it opens and shuts its valves with mathematical precision as to time and manner; it oils its joints; it takes out any air which may accidentally enter into parts that should be vacuous; it warns its attendants by ringing a bell when anything goes wrong which it cannot of itself rectify; - and with all these talents and qualities; and though it have the power of six hundred horses, it is obedient to the hand of a child.

“ITS ALIMENT IS COAL, WOOD, CHARCOAL OR OTHER COMBUSTIBLE; it consumes none while idle; it never tires, and wants no sleep; - is not subject to malady when originally well made, and only refuses to work when worn out with age; - it is equally active in all climates, and will work at anything; it is a water-pumper, a miner, a sailor, a cotton-spinner, a weaver, a blacksmith, a miller - indeed it is of all occupations, and a small engine in the character of a steam-pony, may be seen dragging after it on a railroad, ninety tons of merchandize or a regiment of soldiers with speed greater than that of our fleetest coaches.”

The steam-engine must be fed, and its parts, as they become worn with use, must be repaired. The machinery of the animal frame works under the same conditions, it must have food, and it must undergo constant repairs. Food is the source both of its energies and its structural restoration. The blood, which is formed from our food, flowing to the brain and the muscles and the stomach, not only maintains their power, but in addition carries to the same parts, and to all the rest, the materials of their growth and renovation.

The supply of food to the steam-engine has one purpose only to effect; it is meted out by those who understand the construction and the working of the machinery, who, knowing its wants, supply them with rigorous exactness, without any bias from prejudice or inclination to deviate from what is prescribed.

The food of human beings is more complicated in its objects; the party who takes it does not understand the action or the wants of the machine which he supplies, he is incurious on the subject, and rather repels than courts information; his object is to please his senses, and to gratify his appetites, - perhaps he also takes delight in the whirl into which the machinery is thrown by excess, while such excess actually endangers his existence.

It is generally not till the middle of life that men ascertain how much their comfort and their powers of exertion depend upon the state of the stomach, and lose some of their early indifference to rules of diet.

The sensation of hunger is implanted in us for the purpose of informing us when the body requires new aliment to nourish it. We breathe air into our body, we absorb water from the vapour of the atmosphere, and from the fluids we drink, and when the stomach requires a fresh supply of nourishment, we are impelled to replace the waste the body has undergone; we comply, and we feel gratification in satisfying the demand.

We might have been supplied with only one or two articles of food that would have sustained life, but we are provided with thousands of kinds; we might have found in all substances the same unvarying flavour, but we really find no two exactly alike; each animal substance, each vegetable, each fruit, has its distinctive taste. All this variety pleases the palate, and is doubtless intended to increase the pleasure to be felt in gratifying that sense, which is more necessary than any other for our preservation.

Yet by improper indulgence this gratification is converted into a source of misery, and becomes the instrument of shortening instead of continuing life. Inordinate addiction to the pleasures of the table is certainly one of the most degrading vices that can disfigure the human character. The cloyed palate of the epicure no longer relishes that simple fare which adequately nourishes the body, appeases hunger, and satisfies the wants of those whose relish for plain food is not sophisticated by often repeated excess.

Nutrition is an organic function equally necessary to the plant and the animal, but this function cannot be performed in the animal by organs so simple as those which suffice for the plant. The root, rootlets, stem, and leaves are the apparatus of the plant for receiving aliment and converting it into nutriment: this nutriment is arranged into bark, wood, vessels, leaves, and other organized structures.

Consciousness is not necessary to nutrition as performed by the plant, but it is indispensable to the animal, as it is under the necessity of searching for its food and conveying it into the interior of its body. It must therefore possess the power of perceiving it, of apprehending it, and appropriating it by an act of volition, of none of which actions it is capable without the possession of sensation which plants have not.

The few and simple functions performed by the plant require only the few and simple organs with which it is provided; the numerous and complicated functions performed by the animal require its numerous and complicated organs; the plant, simple as it is in structure, is destitute of no organ required by the nature of its economy; the animal, complex as it is in structure, is in possession of no organ which it could dispense with ; from the one, nothing is withheld that is needed; to the other nothing is given which is superfluous; in the one there is economy without niggardliness; in the other munificence without waste.

Respiration - the act of breathing.
Solvent - a fluid which liquifies other bodies.
Gastric - pertaining to the stomach.
Permeate - to pass through, as water through stones.
Fermented - changed by internal action, so as to become intoxicating.
Intoxication - the effect of poison, especially of alcoholic liquids.

THE peculiar sensation which causes the desire to drink is called thirst. Water is the proper and natural object of such desire, but water alone does not always afford the most speedy relief, though, of all the warm blooded animals, man alone is disposed to gratify his thirst with any other liquid.

Thirst arises from the dryness of the membrane lining the mouth, throat, and stomach. In cases of excessive thirst the mouth and throat become dry and heated, the flow of saliva is diminished, the respiration is laborious, the air expired feels hot and dry, the mouth is kept wide open to inhale every breath of air, the voice becomes hoarse, the speech thick and indistinct, the body feverish and restless, and the pulse weak and rapid. All animals can endure hunger much longer than thirst.

To a great extent thirst may be controlled. Those who indulge in the habit of drinking often are rendered thirsty by abstaining from their customary draughts; While many persons who habituate themselves to only small quantities of liquids with their meals seem never to experience the sensation of thirst. Strong drinks always excite thirst by the irritation they cause in the stomach, and to other parts of the frame.

The fluids of the body are continually exhaling from the skin by perspiration and from the lungs by the breath. Less exhalation takes place in a moderately warm or a cool room, than during active exercise, or in a crowded room, or in hot factories, or forges. Less exhalation also takes place in winter than in summer.

Copious exhalations cause frequent thirst. Hence, those who work hard, those who are occupied in crowded rooms, those who are employed in hot factories, or in scorching forges, require copious draughts of water to allay their thirst. Hence, too, thirst is naturally greater in the summer, when the atmosphere is dry, and the exhalations from the body are almost constant under even moderate exertion.

How benevolent is that wisdom which has supplied man with means of allaying this natural sensation at the very season when it is most excited. The fresh fruits are then truly grateful to the palate, they not only supply water, but they produce moisture in the mouth by exciting a flow of saliva.

It is through water alone that all the active functions of animal life are carried on. It is water alone that can act as the solvent on the various articles of food which are taken into the stomach; the gastric juice itself being nothing else than water, with a small quantity of animal matter and a little acid, which form, with the albumen, &c. of the food, new compounds, that are capable of being dissolved in that liquid. It is water which forms all the fluid portion of the blood, that vital current which permeates the minutest textures of the body, and conveys to each the appropriate materials for its growth and activity.

It is water which, mingled in various proportions with the solid matter of the various textures, gives to them the consistency which they severally require. And it is water which takes up the products of their decay, and conveys them, by a most complicated and wonderful system of sewerage, altogether out of the system. No other liquid naturally exists in the animal body save the oily matter, of fat, which is derived from the plant, and which is stored up chiefly to serve as respiration food.

It might be inferred, then, that water, in addition to properly-selected articles of solid food, would constitute all that the wants of the system can ordinarily require ; and there is abundant evidence that the most vigorous health may be maintained, even under very trying circumstances, without any other beverage.

The introduction of tea, coffee, and cocoa, has led to important changes in the physical and moral habits of mankind. Previous to their introduction fermented liquors of some kind - wine, ale, beer, or cider - were the drink universally used by persons of both sexes. Queen Elizabeth’s maids of honour breakfasted upon beefsteaks and ale. The excitement consequent on the common use of these liquors is a kind of intoxication.

[FIG 78. Coffee. FIG 79. Tea. FIG 80. Cocoa.]

Now in lieu of them, we have beverages which have all the refreshing and exhilarating effects of fermented liquors without producing any evil consequences. To the weary or exhausted, tea and coffee are refreshing; they give activity to the intellect without confusing the head; and they are perfectly adapted to the use of women, which wine and ale can never be. The lovers of tea and coffee are rarely drinkers of stronger liquors, hence the use of these beverages has benefited both manners and morals.

Coffee was introduced into France in 1669, and the French soon displayed a partiality for its use. The Dutch were the first to transplant it from Mocha, where they had purchased a few plants, to their own colonies at Batavia, whence they exported it to Amsterdam. From that city the French consul sent a plant to Louis XIV. It was placed in a hothouse, and throve so astonishingly, that the project of transporting it to their colony of Martinique suggested itself to the government, as likely to be very advantageous.

Three plants were accordingly sent, of which two perished by the way, and the third was preserved solely by the care of Captain Declieux, who, during a long and stormy passage, shared with it his ration of fresh water, and thus preserved its life. This plant was the source of all the coffee plantations afterwards established at Martinique, Guadaloupe, and St. Domingo. This circumstance is recorded in Raynal’s History of the West Indies.

Husbandman - a farmer or cultivator of land.
Agricultural - belonging to the science of cultivating the ground.
Cycle - a period of tine, a periodical course.
Implement - a tool, or instrument of labour.
Portable - that which may be carried or easily moved about.
Traction - the act of drawing.

THE labours of the husbandman are wisely distributed over the whole year. By far the larger proportion of the vegetable productions raised by the labour of man require only one season to bring them to maturity, being sown and gathered in the course of a single year. Among them all there are not perhaps any two which attain perfection in the same number of weeks, or which need to be sown and reaped precisely at the same seasons. Late in autumn, and during the months of spring they are all committed to the earth, and begin to vegetate, continuing to increase through the heats of summer till they are at length gathered in for the sustenance of man and those animals which depend upon his care.

When we set out with the husbandman, after the conclusion of his harvest labours, which may be aptly styled the commencement of the agricultural year, and follow him as he proceeds through the varied duties of the whole cycle, till we arrive with him at the same point in the following year, we observe that there is a perpetual alternation of employments, by which the amount of labour required upon. the farm, at each period of the year, is pretty nearly equalized.

The sowing of wheat commences soon after the corn-harvest, and extends, according to the state of the season or the weather over three or four weeks; during which time the crops of mangolds, and carrots are stored for future use. Thrashing then occupies some time, and as winter approaches, the making and repairing of fences, embankments, and roads, together with draining and carting manure to the field, engage the farmer’s attention.

The sowing of spring-wheat, of beans, pease, and oats is the business of the early spring, and soon after the sowing of barley, to be followed by that of artificial grasses, clover, carrots, and the planting of potatoes. The barley-sowing is scarcely completed ere the hoeing of wheat, beans, potatoes, and carrots commences ; then comes the seed-time for mangold-wurzel, rape, and turnips.

The mowing of clovers and rye-grass accompanies, or is followed by the operations of hoeing and singling turnips, and carrots, and by the general haymaking season from the natural grass of the meadows; the harvesting of peas, and rye, and the general wheat-harvest shortly follows, depending however, in some measure on the seasons; the turnips receive their last hoeing, as the season for the rapid growth of weeds passes away; the corn-crops are secured in stacks and the farmer’s year closes, only to re-commence with a similar round of occupations.

The care of his animals, attendance at markets and fairs, the examination, trial, and choice of implements, and regular book-keeping are not less necessary to the good husbandman than attention to his field duties, and to the proper management of his stock and the stores in his farm-buildings.

[FIG 81. Howard’s Champion Plough.]

The old tools and implements of the farmer will, in a few years, be out of use, or preserved only as proofs of the semi-civilisation of the earlier half of the nineteenth century. The modern iron wheel-plough, which passes through the earth, with less than half the horse-power required by the old plough, will hold its place, and may never be altogether superseded. The patent iron ploughs manufactured by Messrs. Howard, of Bedford, combine every modern improvement and have taken many prizes offered by the Agricultural Societies of England and other countries.

The stout sower, with his huge pocket, dexterously flinging the seed broad-cast in a semicircle around him has long been a rural reality, but will soon only exist in pictures; sowing with the hand is seldom seen, drilling and dibbling have taken its place, and these operations are performed by machines.

[FIG 82. Garrett , & Son’s Drill.]
[FIG 83. Burgess & Key's Mowing Machine]

Mowing with the scythe is still performed, yet the sound of the mower whetting his scythe will soon cease to be heard, for a mowing machine has made its appearance, and has established its superiority over the scythe, whether the grass is a heavy crop or a light one, growing erect, or laid and matted by heavy rains.

The haymaking machine or grass distributor has for many years taken the place of forks for tedding the hay; it is found especially useful for meadow-hay, which requires more scattering than hay from clover and rye grass. It is said to have one disadvantage, that of depriving the hay while in the field of its seeds.

[FIG 84. Nicholson's Haymaking Machine.]

The reaper with his hook bends to his work where the reaping machine has not yet penetrated, but the sickle with its human labourer is retreating before the mechanical reaper, which is more largely employed every year. One firm alone has sent out a thousand of these machines.

[FIG 85. Burgess & Key's Reaping Machine.]

The saving in labour by the use of the reaping machine has been calculated at from five to ten-shillings an acre, besides the saving of time at a busy season, less waste of corn, and less damage to the straw.

The sound of the flail - which has not yet superseded the hoof of the horse and the ox in the countries of Eastern Europe - has almost ceased in Britain; we seldom hear the thumping of this instrument on the barn-floor; the thrashing-machine has taken its place. It is about sixty years since this machine first appeared; and whether it is driven by the power of wind, water, steam, or horses, its superiority to the flail is well-established; for by its means the corn is not only thrashed, but winnowed, sorted, sacked, and weighed, while the straw is hoisted away, and all this is done at less than half the cost of hand labour. Large farmers employ their own machines, small farmers hire them, and thus will it be with the mechanical reaper, mower, and steam-plough.
The old process of winnowing left the wind to blow away the chaff in a blind and capricious manner; but the modern winnowing-machines have such a discriminating power, that they can not only keep the corn apart from the husk, but can also, by means of certain revolving cylinders, and wriggling troughs, separate the corn into its different qualities, and keep the “screenings” to themselves.

[FIG 86. Howard's Horse Rake.]

A very useful implement, the Horse Rake - for collecting hay, corn, stubble, twitch grass, and leaves, has come into use, and its value is proved by the public favour it has received. Its teeth are sickle-shaped, and made of iron or steel, and there is a lifting-bar easily worked by a stout boy, above the teeth, for emptying it as it proceeds. It is mounted on wheels, and is of easy draught. It is also useful for dragging meadows after a flood, and a set of prongs can be attached to it, to work it as a weed extirpator.

The machinery for other purposes connected with husbandry are various, such as grinding-mills, corn-crushers, root-cutters and pulpers, chaff-cutters, oil-cake breakers, rollers, clod-crushers - and all these or any of them may be put in motion by the portable or fixed engines now coming into use for the home-stead or the field, while the Traction engine, carrying its own railway, is likely to occupy a very useful position for heavy cartage.

If we had not the aid of these machines some of the operations of modern husbandry could scarcely be carried forward, nor could the quantity of food now required be supplied; but for the farmer there is another consideration, viz., that the land could not be cultivated with profit.

Rotation - the movement of a body on its axis ; in agriculture, the mode in which crops are made to succeed each other.
Filtrative - that which filters.
Fertilization - the making productive or fertile.
Adulteration - the act of corrupting or making impure by admixture.
Component parts - substances in them.
Fabrication - the act of constructing.
Auxiliary - aiding, or taking a share of labour.

JUDGING from the progress of the last few years, the future prosperity of agriculturists may be considered certain. The produce of the soil has increased, and a better rotation of cropping has become more general, by which more food is raised, especially roots and green crops.

The rent of land has risen in many instances, the prospects of those who cultivate their own land have improved, the incomes of tenant farmers have increased in proportion to the means of improvement they have been able to adopt, and the wages of agricultural labourers have increased also.

Large tracts of waste or common land have been enclosed and rendered productive, and this process is still going forward. Public money is appropriated under certain conditions to the improvement of estates by draining and clearing, which will, in time, be repaid. On lands not naturally filtrative, draining is pursued more vigorously than at any former period, and improved farm-buildings are supplied in many cases, as they become necessary for carrying out the improved systems of management.

Although rents rise, and an increased population adds to the competition for farms, yet economical modes of culture and fertilization so increase the produce as to enable the farmer to pay higher rents.
The self-education of the farmer is keeping pace with the advances in his practice. The chemistry of soils, of manures, and of products, now engages his attention more than in times gone by; while the extent to which adulteration is carried in tillages and cattle-stuffs obliges him to know their component parts.

Fixed and portable steam-engines are found available as a substitute for animal power, and the farmer is encouraging the fabrication of the best machinery for expediting every process of his art, by purchasing such implements more extensively than at any former time. Agriculture employs an auxiliary force of 50,000 horse-power of steam-engines, and 10,000 horse-power is added every year.

Amidst all the agricultural machinery recently introduced, the Steam Plough is the great object of interest, and it is considered that its application to the cultivation of land will be as beneficial to the husbandman as the spinning-jenny was to the cotton-spinner - working a great change in the farming of those heavy soils which at present scarcely repay the expense of culture. By its means outlay will be diminished, and yields augmented.

Mr. Smith of Woolston has perhaps accomplished more for the perfection of the Steam cultivating apparatus than any other individual, and he thus speaks of the apparatus he employs. “One of its chief recommendations is its great simplicity; in proof of which about one-hundred sets are now at work, and there has been no difficulty in getting the ordinary labourers found on the various farms, to work them easily.

“The ropes adjust themselves to any length, and triangular or crooked pieces of land can be almost as easily and quickly worked as square pieces. The implements also adapt themselves to unequal surfaces through hollows and over hills, no matter how deep or steep. The work performed by them is of the most valuable kind, especially for autumn cultivation, and the breaking up of turnip land on strong soils fed off by sheep. The implements are all manufactured by Messrs. J. & P. Howard of the Britannia Iron Works, Bedford.”

[FIG 88. Smith’s Steam Cultivator at Work.]

After a few details on the practical application of the apparatus, Mr. Smith adds, “in this way your farm may be kept as clean as a garden, and with at least one-third fewer horses than are necessary where steam is not adopted; therefore if you are keeping and working fifteen horses, or two neighbours working that number between them, five may be sold, and with what they realize, and the saving in the cost of keep, an Engine and apparatus may be purchased; the cost of coal, and wear and tear of apparatus being a small item compared with horse keep.

“The Engine, of course, will be available for thrashing, grinding, chaff-cutting, and other purposes. But I would warn you against expecting too much, for although your steam-cultivator can do your heavy work, expedite your autumn culture, and produce work that horses cannot equal, you may put it to a kind of work, which horses can do better, and which if performed by steam, would only keep the horses in idleness.”

[FIG 89. Smith’s Patent Steam Cultivator.]

Another system of Steam-ploughing has been introduced by Mr. Fowler, and to his apparatus the judges of the Royal Agricultural Society have twice awarded the prize. But it should be mentioned that Mr. Smith has of late declined to compete in the Society’s trials. Fowler’s apparatus is considered to be the most economical application of steam-power to the cultivation of land, though it is not necessarily the best farmer’s implement, for, if he already possess a portable steam-engine of seven or eight horse-power, he may at once apply it to the working of Smith’s apparatus with a comparatively small outlay of capital.

Ploughing by steam must be considered as an accomplished fact ; the work is done well - better, cheaper, and faster than by plough-horses. Far deeper ploughing than any generally known in previous times is performed by this giant-implement, and there is ample evidence as to the increased produce of steam-tilled land, for we hear of improved qualities of barley, heavier wheat, and more bulky root-crops.

A vast number of other improvements have recently been introduced in the construction of implements. Among these are the jointed harrows, figured below, with teeth so placed that each cuts a separate tract at equal distances, and with joints, which allow them to adapt themselves to ridges or any uneven surface - a simple but valuable improvement.

It has been assumed that the general adoption of the Steam Plough, and other applications of steam power, will render unnecessary a third of the 800,000 farm horses at present employed in Great Britain. The value of our present agricultural produce is estimated at £200,000,000 annually, and this amount, it is considered, might be doubled by the advantages which steam cultivation affords.

Purveyors - providers; those who provide.
Oleaginous - oily, or containing oil.
Coronal - belonging to the crown, crown-like.
Aztec - an ancient Mexican.
Spontaneously - arising without any obvious cause.
Harpoon - a spear, or javelin, generally thrown by the hand.

THE labours of agricultural industry have for their object, in every country, the preservation, increase, and improvement of the productions of the earth and of the various kinds of useful animals. The cultivation of the soil is the most important of all the occupations of man, for, we could exist without manufactures and commerce, but not without food.

Our Purveyors in different countries have to direct their attention to the production and collection of useful vegetables, the tilling and improvement of land, the cultivation of the most useful groins and fruits, the care and increase of plantations of the tea-plant, the sugar-cane, the coffee-shrub, cocoa, chocolate, and nut-trees; spice-bearing plants, oleaginous plants, gum-bearing trees, &c., and also to the habits and raising of such animals as are directly or indirectly employed in the production of food.

In order to obtain the various products which constitute the daily food of the people of England, all climates, languages, and creeds are put under contribution; the variety of distant regions by which our necessities, comforts, and luxuries are supplied is a geographical lesson with which all should be familiar.

The most important article of our food is bread. From whatever grain it is made, the mixture of the flour or meal of that grain into dough, and its subsequent baking forms bread. Bread is either fermented by yeast or by leaven, previous to its being baked, or it can be made equally porous and palatable without fermentation.

Doubtless most of the loaves that come to our tables are baked near our homes; the flour, however, of which they are composed may have been ground in France, in Belgium, in Canada, or in one of the American States. The wheat may have grown on the banks of the Vistula, or the Oder; the Neva, the Dnieper, or the Don; it may possibly have waved within sight of the Pyramids of Egypt - that ancient mart for corn; or on one of the sacred hills of Palestine; it may have been produced in Wallachia or Moldavia, on the shores of Lake Michigan, or on the banks of the Missouri.

Even our butchers’ meat is not exclusively of British breed and fattening, for Belgium, Holland, France, Germany, and many other countries are among our foreign purveyors of animals; while Canada, North America, and New South Wales furnish us with pork and beef, and with prepared meats which will keep good for many years.

Milk is supplied near to our own doors, but we have purveyors of butter in Normandy, Belgium, and Holland; of eggs in many parts of France, while cheese is imported not only from Holland and other European countries, but in large quantities from America.

Garden-fruits and vegetables employ many labourers, and occupy for their production a vast extent of acreage in this country, still we are indebted to several European States for potatoes, cauliflowers, onions, and peas, - .for cherries, plums, pears, apples, filberts, cucumbers, melons, and grapes. Spain sends us oranges and nuts, France sends prunes, Greece currants, Turkey figs, Arabia dates, Palestine and Barbary almonds, Spain, Portugal, and Turkey raisins, and the West Indies pine-apples.

While we are thus bountifully supplied with provisions from all parts of the habitable globe, how great a contrast do we present to whole tribes and nations, which are wholly or principally dependent on a single kind of animal, or in some cases, on a single vegetable, not for food only, but for most of the other necessaries and comforts of existence.

The account given in Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico of the Agave, or Great Mexican Aloe is a striking instance of the multiplicity of human comforts combined in a single production. “The miracle of nature, was the great Mexican Aloe or Maguey, whose clustering pyramids of flowers, towering above their dark coronals of leaves, were seen sprinkled over many a broad acre of table land. Its bruised leaves afforded a paste from - which paper was manufactured, its juice was fermented into an intoxicating beverage, pulque, of which the natives, to this day are excessively fond; its leaves further supplied an impenetrable thatch for the more humble dwellings; thread, of which coarse stuffs were made, and strong cords were drawn from its tough and twisted fibres; pins and needles were made of the thorns at the extremity of its leaves; and the root, when properly cooked, was converted into a palatable and nutritious food. The agave, in short, was meat, drink, clothing, and writing materials for the Aztec! Surely never did nature enclose in so compact a form, so many of the elements of human comfort and civilization,”

[FIG 91. Mexican Aloe.]

The bread-fruit tree of the Society Islands is scarcely less valuable in its application. During eight months of the year it furnishes the Islanders with their chief sustenance in its fruit, which grows spontaneously, and only requires gathering and eating. A kind of cloth is fabricated from its bark, towels and wrappers are formed of its leaves and the wood is made into boats and houses.

[FIG 92. Bread-Fruit.]

The following account of the various purposes to which the seal is applied by the Greenlanders is given by Crantz, a Danish traveller; - ” Its flesh supplies them with their most palatable and substantial food ; the fat furnishes them with oil for lamplight, chamber and kitchen fires; and whoever sees their habitations presently finds that, even if they had superfluity of wood it would be of no use to them. They also mollify their dry food, mostly fish, with oil; and finally they barter it for all kind of necessaries with the factors. They can sew better with fibres of the seal’s sinews than with thread or silk; of the skins of the entrails they make window-curtains for their tents, and shirts; part of the bladder they use as a float to their harpoons, and they make oil-flasks of the stomach. Neither is the blood wasted, but is boiled up with other ingredients and eaten as soup. Of the skin of the seal they stand in the greatest need; because they must cover with seal-skins both the large and small boats, in which they travel and keep their provisions. They must also cat out of them their thongs and straps and cover their tents with them without which they could not exist in summer. No man therefore can pass for a Greenlander who cannot catch seals.”

To the Kamtschatkans the brown bear seems to have given not only the necessaries but many of the comforts of life. The skin, we are told, formed their beds and their coverlets, bonnets for their heads, gloves for their hands, and collars for their dogs, while an over-all made of it, and drawn over the soles of their shoes, prevented them from slipping on the ice. The flesh and fat were their dainties. Of the intestines, they made masks, or covers for their faces, to protect them from the glare of the sun in Spring, and used them as a substitute for glass, by extending them over their Windows. Even the shoulder-blades are said to have been put in requisition for cutting grass.

[FIG 93. Hop-gathering.]

Yang-tse-kiang — a large river of China.
Christian Africans - Africans converted to Christianity.
Pagan Hindoos - idolatrous natives of India.
Granulating - forming into small masses or grains.
Importation - the act of bringing commodities from one country into another.

Tm general drinks of the Anglo-Saxons were ale and mead; wine was a luxury for the great. After the Norman Conquest, wine became more commonly used; and the vine was extensively cultivated in England. The people, however, held to the beverage of their forefathers with great pertinacity; and neither the juice of the grape, nor of the apple was ever a general favourite.

The sturdy yeomen of this period knew not however the ale to which hops in the next century gave both flavour and preservation. Hops appear to have been used in the breweries of the Netherlands in the beginning of the fourteenth century. In England they were not used in the composition of beer till nearly two centuries afterwards.

It has been affirmed that the planting of hops was forbidden in the reign of Henry VI.; and it is certain that Henry VIII. forbade brewers to put hops and sulphur into ale. In the fifth year of Edward VI., the royal and national taste appears to have changed, for privileges were then granted to hop-grounds. In the reign of James I. the plant was not sufficiently cultivated in England for the consumption; as there is a statute of 1608 against the importation of spoiled hops.

[FIG 94. The Hop.]

Of barley there are now above thirty millions of bushels annually converted into malt in Great Britain; and more than eight million barrels of beer are brewed yearly, of which four-fifths are strong beer.

Let us continue the geographical exercise we commenced on page 105 by considering whence we derive the various articles the grocer procures for us. Our tea probably came from the estate of a Chinese mandarin, and may have traversed half the course of the Yang-tse-kiang in its passage to this country.

How vast is the extent of territory in China and Japan over which the cultivation of Tea extends, viz., from 27 to 41 degrees N. Lat.; the plants not yielding their first crop of leaves till the third year after sowing the seed; and what care is requisite in their gathering by single leaves, in their drying, their rolling, their cooling, their sifting into the different varieties, and how large a number of hands must be occupied in producing nearly 80,000,000 lbs. for one year’s supply to the United Kingdom only!

The coffee-growing countries of Arabia, the West Indies, Hindostan, South America, Ceylon, and the Philippines produce for human consumption more than 250,000,000 lbs. yearly, yet each plant yields from two to five pounds only, when two years old. After the gathering comes the roasting, which increases the size of the berry though it loses in weight.

With regard to our sugar we cannot certainly say whether its crystals were extracted from the cane by Christian Africans in one of the islands of the West Indies, or by pagan Hindoos on the banks of the Ganges, but we know it can only be produced by the toilsome labours, under a tropical sun, of many thousands of swarthy-complexioned men, who are employed in planting and hoeing, cutting and crushing the canes, and in granulating the juice, so as to produce the 10,000,000 cwts. of sugar imported into the United Kingdom every year.

[FIG 95. Sugar cane.]

Rice is an East Indian gift, and it forms the principal food of the Hindoos, the Chinese, the Japanese, and other Eastern nations; it is the grain that feeds the largest number of the human race. We also receive large supplies from Carolina, Georgia, the West Indies, Central America, Lombardy, and Valencia. Many thousands of labourers are toiling in these distant climes, in the cultivation, gathering and preparation of this light, wholesome, and easily digested cereal to produce the immense quantity (upwards of 3,000,000 cwts.) imported into England, about one-half of which is exported from England to other lands.

Then we import sago, the staple food of the inhabitants of the eastern Archipelago, which they obtain from several kinds of palm-like vegetables - arrow-root from the East and West Indies, a valuable article of diet for young children and delicate persons - tapioca, prepared from the tubers of the cassava, an American plant largely cultivated in Brazil.

We thus see how numerous are the bands of foreign labourers we employ as purveyors of our daily necessaries and comforts, and that they are found among all races in all climates, and on all soils; and how little indigenous food Great Britain possesses in comparison with her wants. How great is the contrast now with that time when the inhabitants of Britain lived on roots, berries, flesh and milk, when their only fruits were blackberries, sloes, crab-apples, wild strawberries, hazel-nuts, and acorns. Even at a much later period we had scarcely any culinary vegetables of our own, for one of the queens of Henry VIII. had to send to Flanders if she wanted a salad.

Agriculture was introduced upon our coasts by colonies from Belgium, It was afterwards extended by the tyranny of the Romans who exacted a tribute of corn. But it remained for later days to develope the principles of commerce and exchange with other countries and climates, by which means the productions and raw materials of every region are brought to our shores, while those who send them receive in return the manufactures of Britain. Thus it is that Commerce is twice blessed - to the nation which gives and to that which receives. The government of this country takes no concern about the production and importation of food, the supply and demand being regulated only by the private interests of buyers and sellers.

Mutation - change.
Porosity - having pores, or passages for fluids,
Hygienic - relating to the health.
Impermeability - the quality of not being passed through by fluids.
Consecutively - not casually, but succeeding each other in order.

OUR climate is very perplexing in all that regards apportionment of dress to external temperature. With the exception of a brief period in the middle of summer, an Englishman cannot reasonably calculate on a settled temperature for any two days following, even with moderate probability. For this reason he never knows how to dress. One day in winter we may have little short of summer-heat, whilst the next may bring the sudden mutation of an almost Siberian winter.

These rapid alternations of heat and cold are especially prejudicial to health; and there can be no doubt they tend to establish many of the pulmonary diseases - more especially consumption, for which our climate has acquired such a bad celebrity. As a rule, Englishmen are in the habit of going about under-clad. We altogether dispense with fur, and do not avail ourselves of flannel, to the extent that a due regard for our health demands.

Of all the considerations, however, to which the subject of apparel, in relation to temperature, gives rise, none are so important as those affecting the clothing of children. In this respect we err egregiously. How often do we see, in mid-winter, some poor child dressed in Highland, or some other fancy costume, shivering, with cold, blue, and miserable, because of the inadequate protection against cold which its scanty apparel furnishes!

This is sometimes done from considerations of mere vanity: sometimes, however, the plea of making the child hardy is advanced; and it is vainly thought that by thus accustoming the little creature to the extreme of cold, its constitution will be rendered strong hereafter. The advocates of this case-hardening system fallaciously point to the treatment of the children of the poor, to whom scanty apparel is a necessary consequence of their poverty.

The illustration is most unsatisfactory. If in some districts the children of the poor are more robust and healthy than those of other classes, this is not because their constitutions have been strengthened, for all the weaker children succumb; leaving only the stronger ones behind to furnish an illustration.

The animal heat of children is much greater than the correspoading animal heat of adults; their circulation and respiration are far more rapidly performed, and their susceptibility, under extremes of temperature, is greater. These circumstances point to the necessity of furnishing children with a thicker warm clothing than adults, and the indication should never be neglected.

All civilised nations have felt the necessity of protecting the feet, and the kind of protection has been mainly determined by the climate. . . . The requisites of an unexceptionable foot covering, are adequate protection against wet, protection against inequalities of the ground, the capability of allowing freedom of motion to the joints of the foot and ankle, - these may be called the mechanical requisitions of foot covering; in addition to which the material of boots and shoes should have a certain porosity, enough to permit the free egress of cutaneous moisture.

Provided these indications be fulfilled, nothing more in a hygienic sense is required for ordinary boots and shoes. Occasionally, however, weakness of the ankles is treated surgically, and with success, by giving support by means of boots. Care should then be taken, lest in imparting strength to the joint the circulation of the blood be impeded.

Leather, though the ordinary material of boots and shoes, is not the best material for all occasions. If, for example, the feet be suffering from corns, the softest of leather even produces an amount of pressure which is painful. Cloth boots may then be substituted advantageously. If the appearance of this material be objected to for men, the substance termed by its inventor pannus corium is an admirable substitute.

Notwithstanding the softness and total impermeability to moisture of india-rubber, its general adoption as a material for foot covering cannot be recommended. For persons who habitually wear their boots and shoes, who have suddenly to leave a warm apartment and walk through snow or wet to no great distance, india-rubber goloshes may be unobjectionable.

But for pedestrians, in the proper sense of the term - people who walk for many hours consecutively - india-rubber goloshes are most reprehensible wear. The same impermeability to moisture, which enables them to repel wet from without, totally prevents the escape through their substance of all moisture from within. The acrid excretions of the feet are therefore retained; the feet being as completely wet as they would hate been had external moisture found access to them, and far more prejudicially.

Those who wear goloshes of India rubber are recommended to cut them low down at the quarters, and sole them with gutta percha. Not only does the latter material help to keep the feet warm, but it obviates that disagreeable and dangerous tendency to slip, which is so great a mechanical objection to india-rubber, whenever it comes in contact with the wet ground.

The Englishman’s dress seems to be, on the whole, as little exceptionable as any that can be pointed out. We are not thinking of our soldiers, dressed in tight woollen garments, stocks, and heavy head-gear in all climates and seasons alike. The mortality from that tremendous cruelty and folly is a separate item to be urged against the military authorities. Non-military Englishmen wear a costume which may be rendered warmer or cooler without losing its characteristics ; which indicates the form, may fit it easily at the wearer’s pleasure; leaves the limbs free, and need press injuriously nowhere. Some years ago, we must have denounced the cravat, or stock, as dangerous ; but the throat, with its great blood-vessels, and its importance as connecting the whole body with the brain, is now subject to so little pressure that we have only to hope that the relaxation will go on till there is none at all . . . the hat is now, apparently, the only irritational part of an Englishman’s dress; and so many strange devices are upon trial as a substitute for it, that we may safely leave it to the wearers to select some head-covering which shall defend the eyes and brain, be light and easy to carry, and admit air freely.

Neuralgic - relating to pain having its origin in the nerves.
Fantastic - fanciful, whimsical.
Bronchitis - inflammation of the tubes which convey air to the lungs.
Chiropodist - an extractor of corns.
Bunion - a swelling over the joint at the ball of the great toe.

THE clothing of women does not protect them from cold, heat, damp, or glare. Some few uncover the chest and arms under trying circumstances of heat and draught: but they are few; and they must have heard all that can be said of them in the way of warning.
The great body of Englishwomen - those of the middle and poorer classes - have usually some sort of covering from the throat to the hands and feet, but it is too seldom judicious in degree or quality. The modern linsey petticoats are excellent as far as they go ; but it is certain that the working-women of our country are too thoroughly weaned from the woollen clothing of their ancestors.

At present, too, no woman who adopts the fashion of the hoop in any form is properly guarded against the climate. Any medical man in good practice can tell of the spread of rheumatism since women ceased to wear their clothing about their limbs, and stuck it off with frames and hoops, admitting damp and draught, with as little rationality as if they tried to make an umbrella serve the purpose of a bonnet.

Then observe the head and the feet. The eyes are unsheltered from sun and wind, and the most important region of the head is exposed by the bonnets which Englishwomen are so weak as to wear in imitation of the French. Again the doctors have their painful tale to tell of neuralgic pains in the face and head, which abound beyond all prior experience ; of complaints in the eyes, and all the consequences that might be anticipated from the practice of lodging the bonnet on the nape of the neck, and leaving all the fore-part of the skull exposed.

Why the bonnet is worn at all is the mystery. A veil, white or black, would be considered an absurdity as a substitute for the bonnet in a climate like ours; but it would actually be more serviceable than the handful of flimsy decorations now usurping the place of the useful, cheap, and pretty straw-bonnet, which suits all ages in its large variety.

There are the hats, to be sure, which young ladies wear so becomingly. They are hardly simple enough in form for a permanence, but they are substantially unexceptionable for youthful wearers. Their advantages unfortunately tempt elderly ladies to put them on; but the class of mistaken wearers of hats is not a very large one, and we may let them pass. In praising the hat, however, I am thinking of the sort that has a brim. The new and brimless invention is nearly as bad as the bonnet for use, while more fantastic.

The fearful spread of throat and chest diseases is ascribed, by those who should know best, mainly to the modern notion of muffling up the throat in furs and other heating substances. Before the boa came in, we heard little of any one of the tribe of throat diseases winch we now meet at every turn.
Some ladies carry a boa all through the summer, and many tie up their throats with a silk handkerchief whenever they go abroad, in all seasons; suffering their retribution in hoarsenesses, bronchitis, sore-throat, and other ailments never endured by those who cultivate more hardy habits, and reserve such wraps for very special occasions.

People who use cold water in some form of bath every day of the year, and who give their faces and throat to the bracing air, under the safeguard of vigorous personal exercise, forget what colds and coughs are.

As for the other point - the feet - it is to be feared that some are still sent to the grave by thin shoes. The danger of gutta-percha and patent-leather shoes has been referred to. The Balmoral boots of the day would be admirable but for the military heels. Those heels throw the foot into an unnatural posture, by which a great strain is produced.

If my readers happen to be acquainted with a respectable chiropodist, let them inquire the recent news of bunions - that severest of small maladies. They will learn that there has been an unheard of increase and aggravation of bunions since the high-heeled boots came in. The danger of falls is also considerable: and those who have a dread of a long tumble down the stairs, had better put on their boots on the ground-floor.
If we consider the female dress of the present time under any of the remaining conditions, what can we say of it? Does the costume, as a whole, follow the outline of the form? Does it fit accurately and easily? Is the weight made to hang from the shoulders? Are the garments of to-day convenient and agreeable in use? Is the mode modest and graceful? So far from it, that all these conditions are conspicuously violated by those who think they dress well.

Here and there we may meet a sensible woman, or a girl who has no money to spend in new clothes, whose appearance is pleasing - in a straw-bonnet that covers the head, in a neat gown which hangs gracefully and easily from the natural waist, and does not sweep up the dirt; but the spectacle is now rare; for bad taste in the higher classes spreads very rapidly downwards, corrupting the morals of all.

The modern dress perverts the form very disagreeably The evil still begins with the stays, in too many instances, though there is less tight-lacing than formerly . . . The ribs are pressed out of their places, down upon the soft organs within, or overlapping one another: the heart is compressed, so that the circulation is irregular: the stomach and liver are compressed, so that they cannot act properly ; and then parts which cannot be squeezed are thrust out of their places, and grave ailments are the consequence.

At the very best, the complexion loses more than the figure can be supposed to gain. It is painful to see what is endured by some young women in shops and factories, as elsewhere. They cannot stoop for two minutes over their work without gasping and being blue, or red, or white in the face. They cannot go up-stairs without stopping to take breath every few steps. Their arms are half-numb, and their hands red or chilblained; and they mast walk as if they were all-of-a-piece, without the benefit and grace of joints in the spine and limbs. A lady had the curiosity to feel what made a girl whom she knew so like a wooden figure, and found a complete palisade extending round the body. On her remonstrating, the girl pleaded that she had “only six-and-twenty whalebones !”

Filamentous - in threads.
Felted - worked into a compact substance by rolling and pressure.
Caloric - the principle of heat.
Absorbent - that which draws up or imbibes.
Chamois - leather formed from the skin of the chamois.
Callosity - hardness.

WOOLLEN fabrics, as articles of clothing, have several advantages over other materials. They are bad conductors of heat; hence their warmth by preventing the heat of the body from escaping, and their utility in preserving the equability of its temperature, though exposed to sudden changes. From their filamentous texture and elasticity they are light and pliable; and yet, from a peculiar property of wool, it admits of being felted, and can be prepared of any degree of weight and thickness.

Woollen garments possess the property of not being easily wetted, while they are sufficiently porous either to absorb or to permit the escape of all cutaneous exhalations. Further, when worn next the skin, their rough and uneven surface produces in every motion of the body a gentle friction, which greatly assists and promotes the functions of the minute cutaneous vessels and nerves.

But strongly as the importance of having a bad conductor of heat next the skin should be impressed on the mind, there is a point connected with it which is almost as important. The inner garment, especially if made of flannel, ought not to be worn during night but invariably taken off, and as invariably resumed in the morning.
In bed it is unnecessary, it is worse than unnecessary, for it does harm: it then stimulates the skin, and produces a preternatural waste of the secretions, and corresponding debility of system - a corresponding liability to suffer from the depressing influence of cold, and a corresponding incapability of resisting its influence. But, further, removing this garment during the night relieves it from the scurf, some degree of dampness, and other impurities which it must acquire during a day’s wear, and so renders it fresh and more agreeable to the sensations of the wearer.

Cotton, though greatly inferior, ranks next to wool in non-conducting properties. From its comparative cheapness, lightness, and the facility with which it can be cleansed, it has of late years been gradually superseding the use of flannel as underclothing.

[FIG 96. Cotton-plant. FIG 97. Flax-plant]

But, though recommending itself for these reasons, it can by no means be considered as a perfect substitute for flannel, whether used in a pure state or when mixed with a certain proportion of wool. Its ultimate fibre is altogether different; being void of that springy softness and elasticity so peculiar to wool, and incapable, moreover, of being felted to any thickness without becoming hard and obstructive.

Further, it is far from being so absorbent, is more readily wetted, and requires therefore to be more frequently changed and submitted to the laundress. Nevertheless, it is a valuable staple of dress, and is in general use both as under and exterior clothing from the tropics, of which it is a native produce, to the limits of the polar circle.

Linen, though inferior both to cotton and wool as a nonconductor of heat, and absorbent of moisture, is now extensively used as an article of inner clothing. It is comparatively cheap, is easily kept clean, and its snowy whiteness enables us at once to detect when it is soiled or unfit for wear.
On the other hand, it must be confessed that linen has many disadvantages as an article of inner clothing. Being denser in the fibre than cotton, and much more so than wool, it forms a good conductor of heat, and thus rapidly robs the skin of its free caloric; hence the cold feeling experienced when linen is just put on.

But though rapidly conducting the heat, it does not readily absorb the insensible perspiration, and thus soon becomes saturated, leaving the pores of the skin clogged and obstructed unless the garment be frequently changed.

[FIG 98 Silk-worm.]

Silk, as a non-conductor of heat, ranks next to cotton: but its qualities in this respect depend in a great measure upon the kind of fabric into which it is woven. Generally speaking, silken fabrics are light and thin; articles of luxury and ornament rather than of every-day utility.

Furs and down are by far the warmest materials, but in Britain they can scarcely be considered as articles of general clothing. Soft, light, elastic, they constitute excellent adjuncts during the winter months, while their fine colours and markings add greatly to their appearance. When worn, as furs usually are, with the skin attached, they are rather impermeable to exhalations, and are not in this light to be considered as equal to the finer fabrics woven or knitted from wool.

Leather, unless peculiarly prepared (as chamois), is by no means fit to be worn as an inner garment; in fact, the common application of this material is for boots and shoes, for which it is admirably suited by its strength and durability.
Unless made somewhat easy, so as to allow room for a worsted sock or stocking and a certain amount of air, leather in boots form but a cold covering, at the same time that they are all but impermeable to any kind of exhalation.

There is, in general, no member of the body more sinned against - the chests of stay-wearing ladies scarcely excepted - than the foot; and the certain penalty is corns, callosities, and deformities; an unspeakable amount of pain, and in the long-run, a partial destruction of the powers and functions of one of the most essential, of the bodily organs. The feet ought to be as free from disease and pain as the hands; their structure and adaptation to the wants and comforts of man being naturally perfect.

Census - a periodical enumeration of the people of a state taken by order of the government. In England the Census is taken once in ten years; it includes not only their numbers, but also their distribution over the kingdom, their ages, conjugal condition, occupations and birth-place, with returns of the Blind, the Deaf and Dumb, and the inmates of Public Institutions.

WHEN the Census of Great Britain was taken in 1851 the information obtained as to the Occupations of the People was classified; and it was found that fourteen out of seventeen of the classes were engaged in some definite branch of industry as a means of subsistence.

The sixth of these fourteen classes comprised, all who rendered personal services to others, and was divided into three sub-classes;

1. Those who provided board and lodging - public or private, including houses of public entertainment.
2. Those engaged in attendance, including domestic servants.
3. Those employed in providing articles of wearing apparel. This sub-class comprises nearly a million and a quarter of people, of whom 750,008 were women, and 466,364 were men. It is therefore evident that the various’ employments connected with the fabrication of clothing present the chief field for the industry of women, next to domestic service.

It must, however, be understood that those persons thus employed deal only with fabrics already prepared to their hands, that they have nothing to do with the production of those fabrics ; the woollen-cloths, linens, calicoes, stuffs, silks, laces, &c. being produced by other classes; the makers of dress being entirely occupied in the fashioning of garments required for need or luxury.

The arts of life, of civilization, and of refinement must be thoroughly known and practised in a community before a man is able to put on a coat, or a woman a dress, whether the material employed be wool, linen, silk, or cotton; the production of such articles implies the practice of numerous other arts which can only be carried on in communities, such as those of agriculture and mining, the use of coals, machines, vehicles for transportation, &c.

Besides the enumeration given of persons occupied in making clothing, there are others whose livelihood depends upon the demand for articles of dress, viz, the manufacturers of such accessories and ornaments as pins, buttons, hooks and eyes, beads, ribbons, braid, buckles, laces, thread, &c.; and also those who make the implements required, as needles, scissors, and thimbles; at least 100,000 persons are engaged in the production of these articles.

It has long been known that needlewomen have been the worst-paid of all human rivals in the Arts of Industry. The work they perform is easily learned, the demand for it is abundant, and cheapness is the temptation which stimulates this demand. But the Sewing Machine has already affected the employment of needlewomen, and it is thought not prejudicially.

This machine makes five hundred stitches a minute, and completes a shirt in less than an hour, that is, such parts of it as the machinery can execute, including plain sewing, straight, angular, or curved, and backstitching. There are however, certain operations in, dress-making which can only be accomplished by human skill, such as are required to form flounces, gussets, frills, and tacks. These are, at present, beyond the capabilities of the machine.

The introduction of the machine has opened employment to some, as attendants on its operations, while others have turned to the more critical work which the machine cannot perform. The demand for clothing will be increased by the cheapness which will ensue from the universal application of the machine, and the probability is that as many needle-women will be required as formerly, and be better paid.

The following comparison of times required to do different kinds of needle-work is the result of practical experiments instituted by a sewing-machine company in the United States. The fineness of the work muss be presumed to be equal in the two processes. Whereas it took fourteen hours and twenty-six minutes to complete a gentleman’s shirt by hand, the same was finished by machine in one hour and sixteen minutes. A frock-coat took sixteen hours and thirty-five minutes by hand-labour, and two hours and thirty-eight minutes by machine. A lady’s chemise required ten hours and a-half to be produced by hand, and one minute over an hour for its production by the machine. A satin waistcoat was made in seven hours and nineteen minutes by hand; in one hour and fourteen minutes by machine. A pair of cloth trowsers required five hours and ten minutes by hand; and only fifty-one minutes by machine. A lady’s silk dress, which cost the labour of eight hours and twenty-seven minutes by hand, took one hour and thirteen minutes by machine; in a merino dress the comparative gain in time was greater by nine minutes. In smaller matters, a silk apron was produced by the machine in fifteen minutes, which required four hours and sixteen minutes by ordinary workmanship; whilst a plain apron was made in nine minutes by machine, which consumed one hour and twenty-six minutes by hand.

Whatever other results arise the community will be gainers, for the labour which the machine has displaced will find new channels - the wages saved will circulate in the development of other modes of industry - and we may hope that the sorrowful truthfulness which inspired the poet to sing “The Song of the Shirt,” will no longer be a reality and a reproach.

[FIG 99. The Sewing Machine.
A. Handle of Fly-wheel. B. Reel and cotton. C. Needle-guides and fixer. D. The work being executed.]

Lustration - the act of cleansing or purifying.
Extraneous - not belonging to a thing.
Degraded - lowered, worn down.

HABITS of cleanliness not only render people agreeable to those with whom they associate, but are the best preservative of health. Those who do not cultivate these habits cannot go into company without giving offence. The further a people advance in civilization, the more they are disposed to cultivate personal purity, for it is one of the external evidences of refinement of both mind and morals.

“Is there a house,” says a lively writer, “where the doctor seldom enters but as a guest. - where the lads are brisk in shop or warehouse, and the lasses merry at home? It is pretty certain that early hours are found there and plenty of cold water.

“The fever patient finds inexpressible relief fro the sponging with vinegar and water, and the same kind of relief is given by ablution, under the lesser fever of toil. There are many classes of labourers and mechanics whose health would be preserved and their lives prolonged if they practised this duty of periodical cleansing.”

A neat, clean, fresh-aired, sweet, cheerful, well arranged, and well-situated house exercises a moral as well as a physical influence over its inmates, and makes the members of a family peaceable and considerate of the feelings and happiness of each other; the connection is obvious between the state of mind thus produced, and habits of respect for others and for those higher duties and obligations which no laws can enforce.

On the contrary, a filthy, squalid, noxious dwelling, rendered still more wretched by its noisome site, and in which none of the decencies of life can be observed, contributes to make its unfortunate inhabitants selfish, sensual, and regardless of the feelings of each other; the constant indulgence of the passions renders them reckless and brutal, and the transition is natural to propensities and habits incompatible with a respect for the property of others or for the laws.

Purity of vesture seems to be a principal precept of Nature, and observable throughout creation. Fishes, from the nature of the element in which they reside, can contract but little impurity. Birds are unceasingly attentive to neatness and lustration of their plumage. All the slug race, though covered with slimy matter calculated to collect extraneous things, and reptiles, are perfectly free from soil.

The fur and hair of beasts in a state of liberty and health are never filthy, or sullied with dirt. Some birds roll themselves in dust, and occasionally cover themselves with mire; beasts have the same habit; but this is not from any liking or inclination for such things, but to free themselves from annoyances, or to prevent the bites of insects.

The vegetable world presents a universal appearance of purity; a soiled or dirty plant, growing naturally, is never to be seen. Provisions are found in plants to protect them in this unsullied state - a highly polished surface, a waxy secretion, hairs, feathers or down, are given them to prevent the lodgment of liquid upon them, which might cause other matter to adhere to soil them. Dust sometimes lodges on plants in dry weather, but this is washed off by the first shower. Dead portions of leaves and flowers generally detach themselves from growing plants and fall off, this also tends to their neatness of appearance.

Who that surveys the most ordinary landscape, unfitted perhaps to inspire the poet or awaken the imagination of the romancist, can point to any stain upon its smiling face if the defiling contact of man be not manifest? The fresh raiment of the fields, the hard features of the rocks, the stream descending in clear, sparkling, laughing, tumbling waters, or stealing in slower measure through the plain; the spotless aspect of the driven snow, the smooth-laid surface of the sandy shore, the deep pellucid waters of the great ocean - these are all clean. There is no spot of filth to be seen in them, except when the purificatory process is actually going on.

Then the heavens assume what we might perhaps consider a filthy aspect - the sky becomes clothed with sackcloth, the hills disappear in murky fogs, the mountain stream comes down in floods of mud, hurling along heaps of degraded materials; the sea casts up its mire and dirt, and at these times the law appears suspended; but, on the contrary, this is the very process itself by which the general result is obtained.

In a little while all this seeming disorder ends, and the landscape only looks cleaner than ever when it is over. A. vast practical benefit results from a chain of circumstances apparently so trifling as the gathering and discharging of a rain-cloud. All the impurities which a state of change necessarily entails are thus removed; not only is the face of the earth renewed, and the crowding vegetation which luxuriates upon its fertile bosom re-invigorated, but it is also washed clean, exposed afresh to atmospheric influences, while the gatherings of previous weeks are all swept down and deposited out of sight beneath the surface of the blue wave.

Water thus appears to be the principal restorative of beauty to nature’s countenance; but it is no doubt aided materially by winds, which scatter into the air the dust and other extraneous particles, which might and do collect upon the face of all natural objects.

Architecture - the science of constructing houses, bridges, &c. according to art and rule.
Quadrangular - a figure having four sides and four angles.
Ventilation - the means of causing pure air to circulate in rooms, &c.
Sanitary - relating to health.

[FIGURE: The late Prince Consort's Model Cottages, modified.]

A. Staircase to Gallery. B. Open Gallery of Slate. C. Entrance Lobby. D. Living Room. E. Kitchen fitted with - a. Cot tager’s Stove; b Sink and Plate-rack. Coal-box under; c. Ventilated safe; d. Dustshaft. G. Parent’s Bedroom. H. children’s Bedroom. I. Passage. K. Water-closet.

FROM the earliest period in the history of the world, the love of society, to say nothing of the fear of wild beasts, led men to congregate in particular spots. Sustenance was of course the first consideration; but this being provided, a protection from the rays of the sun, the wind, or the rains, according to the climate of the country, would be the next object of attention.

The shelter provided at first was naturally rude and incomplete, and was necessarily regulated by the habits of the people, the nature of the country, and the materials attainable on the spot....
Those who sought sustenance from the cultivation of the land, remaining stationary, would seek to appropriate natural hollows and caverns, and ultimately to form them; or would pile up such materials as the situation might afford to make a substantial place of refuge.

Those tribes who pastured flocks, and were consequently compelled to change their quarters as food began to fail, would make use of temporary or more portable constructions. Thus where we find it recorded that Jabal “was the father of such as dwell in tents,” it is added, “and of such as have cattle.”

The houses of this country have undergone many changes of form and construction. Three centuries ago they were constructed in a very different manner from the houses of the present century. The chief materials were wood and plaster, and a common but peculiar feature was the projecting upper floors. The internal arrangement was adapted to the wants of that day, and the external architecture had often a picturesque appearance.

After the great fire of London the advantage of building in cities with brick or stone became so apparent, as well as the adoption of some regularity, that a great change took place in house-building in the metropolis, which extended by degrees to the houses which were from time to time rebuilt throughout the country.

In this gradual change the projecting floors with large bow windows - the wooden galleries round the quadrangular courts - the boldly projecting dripping eaves - and the high-pitched roofs with their large windows - have almost entirely disappeared. In London and other large towns, the basement story is for the most part built below the level of the ground, the earth being excavated for that purpose; this floor usually contains the kitchen and the rooms for the use of the domestics.

English houses are in general well provided with means for carrying off water and all impurities which require to be removed from the premises; that is, the better houses in the large towns are so provided; but many improvements must be yet introduced before the same can be said of the mass of dwellings.

The houses of the poorer classes are too often negligently constructed. In their construction, economy, convenience, and a wholesome ventilation, should be mainly kept in view, and these may be united with ns much picturesque beauty as the nature of the materials will admit of without increasing the expense.

One of the most interesting social features of the present day is the attention given to the construction of healthy dwellings at a moderate rent, for the working-classes. Narrow streets, wretched dwellings, without drainage, or water, and having no provision for the separation of the members of the household, are found not only to engender disease, but to act as direct incentives to vice.

For more than twenty years several benevolent associations have laboured for the improvement of the habitations of the working-classes, and these efforts have been aided by many sanitary laws for the construction and superintendence of lodging-houses, acts for the removal of nuisances, and the prevention of disease have been passed by Parliament, and Boards of Health have been established in all the populous districts of the kingdom.

Model lodging-houses have been provided in many towns, especially in London, and model cottages have been built in numerous rural quarters, while the duties and taxes which pressed heavily on the construction and comforts of dwellings have been repealed, such as those on bricks, on glass, on timber, and on windows.

In addition to the efforts made by Societies for improving the dwellings of the labouring classes, the Government has provided more healthy lodging rooms for unmarried soldiers, and more comfortable homes for those who are married; the coast-guard service has been provided with improved cottages; cheap and comfortable lodging-rooms or separate houses have been established for the police, and this practice is extending to other subordinate officers employed in the civil service.

Landed proprietors, manufacturers, merchants and other employers of labour have also felt the obligation to provide improved dwelling accommodation for those who are dependent upon them, and the advantages to both employers and employed have become self-evident.

At the Exhibition of 1851, his Royal Highness the late Prince Consort exhibited at Kensington two model houses, adapted to Working people. The plan of these cottages was modified by Henry Roberts, Esq., an architect who had devoted many years, and much practical knowledge and benevolence to the improvement of dwellings for the Labouring Classes. This plan, with the slight alterations introduced in it, is shown at the head of this Section. These cottages were afterwards erected for habitation at Kennington Park, Surrey.

Aggregation - the act of collecting together.
Cohesive - that adheres firmly.
Stratified - arranged in layers.
Alkali - a substance with an acrid taste, it unites with and destroys acids. It turns blue vegetable colours to green, and yellow vegetable colours to brown.
Barilla - a plant cultivated in Spain for its ashes, from which the purest kind of mineral alkali is obtained.
Kelp - a species of seaweed ; also the ashes of sea-weed used in the manufacture of soda.

VARIOUS kinds of stone ore employed in the construction of buildings, the chief of which are granite, limestone, and sandstone. Granite, as its name imports, is an aggregation of grains. It occurs in the larger mountain ranges, and it is one of the oldest of all rocks. Our chief supplies are obtained from Aberdeenshire, Devon, and Cornwall. It can be obtained for the purpose of the builder and sculptor in larger pieces than any other rock.

Limestones are very abundant and are more commonly used than Granite; the kinds called Portland Stone and Purbeck Stone, from Dorsetshire, and various kinds found in Yorkshire and Derbyshire are most commonly used for building purposes. St. Paul’s and many other edifices in London are constructed of Portland stone.

The Sandstones, also called Freestones, are chiefly composed of silex or flint in fine particles, united by a natural cement and great pressure ; they are an excellent building-stone. Near Bath, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, there are extensive quarries of Sandstone.

Bricks, made from clay, are more generally used in the construction of dwelling-houses in England than stone. In a few districts; where stone is abundant, and can be cheaply quarried and worked, it supplies the place of bricks. A good moulder can make from 5000 to 6000 bricks in a day; they are made by machinery much more rapidly than by the hand-process. After bricks are moulded, and thoroughly dried they are baked in clamps or kilns.

Whether buildings are constructed of bricks or of stone, mortar is used as a cement to unite the materials together in one compact mass. It is formed of quicklime, sand, and water. Lime mixed with sand becomes harder, more cohesive, and more durable than if it were used alone. Plaster, which is spread smoothly over walls or partitions, is formed of certain proportions of lime, fine sand, and water, with a mixture of cow’s-hair to assist in giving it cohesion.

The roof-coverings of houses are generally slate, a stratified rock which can be split into thin layers; tiles, made of the same kind of clay as bricks, are also used. Our chief slate quarries are in Wales, Cumberland, and Scotland.

The timber most commonly used for building purposes is deal. Oak is only used in the hugest and best buildings, and for ships. Firs and pines, supply us with the different kinds of deal - timber, which ranks next to the oak in importance. Norway, Sweden, the shores of the Baltic, and Canada are the chief localities of the pine-forests.

Iron is one of the most useful materials employed for building purposes. It has also been recently introduced for plating ships of war. The ore abounds in many parts of England ; and the iron-works of Staffordshire, Shropshire, South Wales, Yorkshire, and Derbyshire afford an abundant supply of the metal, whether required in ponderous slabs of cast iron for pillars, beams, arches or machinery, or in the light forms of sheet, bar or rod iron, distinguished by the term wrought-iron. The quantity of iron produced in England and Wales exceeds two millions of tons annually.

Before the introduction of glass, the windows of a dwelling were either uncovered holes, admitting both light and cold, or they were covered with oiled paper, oiled skin, or some other partially transparent material, which admitted but a dim light. The principal ingredients used in the manufacture of glass are flint, or sea sand, and an alkali ; the alkali being pearl-ashes for the finer kinds of glass; and barilla, and wood-ashes for the inferior qualities.

Lead, another material much used in building operations, is obtained from mines in Derbyshire, Devonshire, Cornwall, Yorkshire, Cumberland, Northumberland, and Wales; it is used for pipes, for roof-gutters, and for cisterns. Zinc has come into use for many of the purposes for which lead only was formerly employed, but it is neither so flexible nor so fusible as lead.

The outer walls of buildings are sometimes covered with cement, so as to resemble Bath, Portland, and other descriptions of stone. But more commonly with stucco, which is composed of run lime, called putty, and sharp sand washed, which is brought to a surface by trowelling.

Profession - an employment requiring a learned education, as law, divinity, physic, teaching,
Aptitude - readiness, quickness.
Producers - those who produce, as farmers, manufacturers, &c.

ONE of the first signs of advancement in the social condition of mankind is the adoption of a fixed employment. Every man finds it his interest to labour exclusively at one kind of business; and to enable him to labour with skill and quickness he spends his earlier years, between youth and manhood, in acquiring a trade or profession.

A man wants many things besides those his own trade enables him to produce. The shoemaker makes shoes, but he must exchange the shoes he makes for those articles of food and clothing which he needs. Thus, he sells the products of his labour to supply all his wants; every man has his labour, or something that his labour produces to exchange for what he wants. By these means the labour of every man is rendered more productive than if every one attempted to do every thing for himself.

The increase of aptitude, skill, and productive power, resulting from a constant attention to any one description of manual or intellectual labour is a circumstance familiar to all. Take, out of the numerous classes of producers in a country, only twelve, such as the farmer, miller, engineer, carpenter, brickmaker, blacksmith, glassmaker, cutler, potter, clothier, miner and surgeon; and suppose that each of these, despising the services of the others, were to depend upon his own power exclusively for the supply of the necessaries and comforts of life - what a state of confusion! What a miserable spectacle would be the result, compared with what we witness daily! What ill cultivated farms, what impassable roads, what inefficient machines, what comfortless houses, what awkward tools, what clumsy furniture, what want of leisure, and of means for intellectual cultivation!

Go into a shoemaker’s shop, and ask him why he does not make tables and chairs for himself, and hats and coats and everything he wants. He will tell you, that he must have a complete set of joiners’ tools to make one chair properly; the same tools as would serve to make a hundred chairs. And if he were also to make the tools himself, and the nails, he would want a smith’s forge, and anvil, and hammer. And after all, it would cost him great labour to make clumsy tools, and chairs; because he has not been used to that kind of work. “It would be less trouble to him to make shoes that would sell for as much as would buy a dozen chairs than to make one chair himself. To the joiner again, it would be as great a loss to attempt making shoes for himself. And so it is with the hatter, the tailor, and all other trades. It is best for all that each should work in his own way, and supply his neighbours while they supply him.

TRADES EMPLOYED IN BUILDING.

The workmen employed in the Building Trades are masons, bricklayers, carpenters, slaters, plasterers, plumbers, glaziers, painters, and others amounting to nearly 500,000 of the population; besides a much larger number who are engaged in providing timber, clay, bricks, building-stone, limestone, iron, lead, glass, and the other materials required.

Every material wanted in the building trades must be procured through the medium of various channels, by the labour of workmen devoted to specific occupations; whether it be the felling and shipment of timber, the procuring and preparation of stone, the tempering and moulding of clay for bricks, the quarrying and burning of limestone for mortar, the splitting and squaring of slates, the manufacture of glass, or the making of the various articles which the ironmonger furnishes from the numberless trades employed in their production.

Every workman’s attention is devoted to the department of labour in which he has acquired skill, the locksmith makes locks, the joiner fixes them to doors, and each uses the tools adapted for his especial service, and to the use of which he has been accustomed.

For most of the industrial occupations educated labour is required. No man can be a carpenter, a stone-mason, a bricklayer, a slater, or a blacksmith without being educated for the particular calling he intends to pursue. He therefore spends several years in learning his business, during which time he acquires the necessary skill to make his labour valuable. The longer the time, and the greater the expense of his training, and the more skilful he is, the higher ought to be the rate of his wages.

The lowest kinds of labour may be performed by any healthy person with very little previous practice, consequently this class of labourers generally earn only sufficient to find them in the common necessaries of life. The stone-mason receives higher wages than the mere excavator, the bricklayer receives more than the labourer that waits upon him.

King-wood -a Brazilian fancy wood, of brilliant colours.
Amboyna-wood - wood of the East India islands, used for ornamental work.
Tulip-wood - a wood of clouded red and yellow, used for bordering in cabinet work.
Lignum-vitae - a very hard wood, brought from Jamaica.
Sandal-wood - a tropical wood remarkable for its fragrance and its oil.
Satin-wood - a wood of light canary-yellow from Nassau, one of the Bahama islands.
Rectangular - four-sided.
Five per centum - one smiling in the pound; or £5 in the £100.
Specify - express clearly.
Quoins - corners; stones of which angles in buildings are made.
Scantlings - a name given to the smaller timbers, by builders.
Downrights - the perpendicular spouts.

THE industrial art by which furniture is produced, relates mostly to the preparation of wood-work by the saw, the piano, the chisel, and other similar tools. Chairs, tables, cabinets, side-boards, buffets, sofas, with every other article of wood-work, are made by the cabinet-maker, who, in addition to the woods in ordinary use, employs many costly kinds remarkable for their stripes, veins, curls, eyes, and various colours, shades and lustres.

Among these woods are the mahogany, rose-wood, yew, king-wood, Amboyna-wood, tulip-wood, lignum-vitae, sandal-wood, satin-wood, elm, pollard-oak, walnut. These kinds of wood are used as logs, planks, or veneers, according to the purpose to which they are applied.

One distinction between the work of the carpenter and that of the cabinet-maker is, that the latter, uses very few nails to secure the different portions of his work.; while the former uses a great number. Numerous as are the pieces forming a mahogany table, there is scarcely an iron nail to be found in it.

One reason for this is that the head of a nail would present an unsightly appearance in a mahogany article of furniture; but besides this, peculiar joints are made, which with the aid of glue, render the use of nails quite unnecessary. One is called mitreing, and is similar to that by, which the corners of picture frames are joined. Another kind of joint still mote frequently used by the cabinet-maker is that called dovetailing. This is a curious kind of interlacing of the ends of one piece of wood with those of another. Another is the mortise and tenon joint, in which the mortise is a rectangular cavity cut in one piece of wood, to receive a projecting piece shaped to the exact size called tenon.

[FIG 101. Dovetailing. FIG 102. Mortise Tenon.]

There are about 350,000 workers in wood in the kingdom, of whom a very large number are employed in making articles of household furniture. There has been a rough estimate that about 100,000 average timber trees are required to make the furniture for the new houses built annually in England and Wales.

Carpenters construct all the rougher portions, and joiners the more finished details in the timber wont of houses. The cabinet maker engages on such timber-work only as is connected with household furniture; but there are many different departments, such as the chair-maker, the bedstead-maker, the carver, the general cabinet-maker - who makes tables, drawers, sideboards, wardrobes, &c. the fancy cabinetmaker - who uses veneers, of costly woods, and makes work-boxes, tea-caddies, desks, dressing-cases, and other highly-finished articles. The upholsterer does what is called the ‘soft work’, that is all that relates to curtains, hangings, cushions, and so forth; he is also responsible for the due finishing and fitting of carpets and beds.

Those portions of domestic furniture called hard-ware are usually supplied by the furnishing ironmonger ; their production employs many thousands of hands, especially in such towns as Birmingham, Sheffield, Wolverhampton, and the districts immediately .around them.

THE ARCHITECT, CONTRACTOR &C.

An Architect is a gentleman of liberal education, who is skilled in the arts of building. His occupation is to form plans and designs for dwellings and other buildings, and to direct the various artificers employed. The architect’s payment is generally five per centum on the amount of money expended on the work he designs and directs.

The first thing an Architect has to do is to consider the site fixed upon for a dwelling or other building. He generally has no choice in this respect. If he had he would select a gravelly sub-soil, for dryness and drainage ; a southern aspect, for warmth; and a spot sheltered from north-east winds by a rising ground or a plantation. These conditions it is not always possible to secure.

In drawing his plan he will adapt it to the site, including in it such accommodations as are required according to the amount to be expended on the building. He will then specify the work to be done by each artificer, and the materials to be used, beginning with the foundations, - the depth to be excavated, the footings of the walls, the drains, the kind of pipes, stones, bricks, the window and other openings, the quoins or other dressings, the mantel-pieces, flues, chimneys, &c. This specification is for the Mason or Bricklayer.

For the Carpenter and Joiner he specifies the kind of timber of which the roof is to be framed, and the dimensions of the scantlings, including rafters, collars, joists and ridges , also for floors, skirtings, shelvings, stairs, window-frames, shutters, &c. He also describes the style in which the doors are to be made, and the locks, latches, and hinges to be employed.

For the Plumber, Glazier, and Painter, he specifies the lead-work of the roof, spouting, and downrights, the weight of the lead to be used, the quality of glass, and the number of coats of paint the wood-work and the iron-work are to receive. He also specifies the work to be done by the Plasterer, and the kind of slates or tiles, and their fastenings to be used by the Slater.

These specifications usually conclude with a direction that the work is to be completed in a substantial and workmanlike manner, by a time mentioned, under a forfeiture of so many pounds a week so long as it may remain unfinished.

The plans and specifications are then placed in the hands of a Contractor, who calculates the cost of materials, and the price of labour for each department of the work, and adds to the whole a sum to remunerate himself for his superintendence and risk. If the amount, which is called his estimate, be satisfactory, the contractor generally signs an agreement to complete the whole work by the time fixed. This is the Contract.

In extensive buildings there may be, and often are contractors for each department, masonry and brick-work, carpentry, slating, iron-work, &c., or one person may contract for the whole and employ sub-contractors.

In large buildings a Clerk of the Works is generally engaged, who acts under the direction of the Architect, and whose business is to superintend the execution of the works, inspect the materials, and reject such as may be unsound or improper, or not according to the Specification. He is understood to be placed on the premises to see the plan duly and properly carried out.

Education - the act of bringing up -or bringing out, as from ignorance into knowledge.
Geograaphy - the science which describes the surface of the earth, &c.
Arithmetic - the science of numbering or computing.
Newton’s Principia - Sir Isaac Newton’s first Principles - the contracted title of the “Philosophica Naturalis Principia Mathematica.”
Geometry - the science mensuration; originally the art of measuring the earth.

THE education of their children is the duty of all parents, including both instruction in knowledge, for their future well-being in the world; and training in moral and religious duties.

The importance of education is not yet universally acknowledged and carried out by the parents of the poorer classes. Boys are taken from school to labour before useful acquirements have been made, or good habits formed girls, who can neither read nor sew, are sent to work in factories; they grow up, and have to perform the duties of women, without knowing either how to keep a house clean, or to cook their provision.

The religious duties of children are those which produce love, honour, and obedience to our Maker and Heavenly Father, and are binding on all mankind. Their first moral duties are to love, and honour their parents. while a feeling somewhat akin to this principle will prompt them, if it be duly cultivated, to love their neighbours as themselves, and to do to others as they would have others do to them.

If this principle were implanted early in the minds of children, cherished by circumstances of daily occurrence, their conduct referred to it as a standard, acted upon in after-years, and thus made their rule of life, we should have a wise and highly moral generation. But it should be applied in all the relations of life, so that mankind would be linked together in this brotherhood of kindness, whether countrymen or foreigners.

Every good Government is favourable to the education of its people, and some States compel parents to keep their children at school till they have acquired those rudiments of knowledge which are considered necessary for their future conduct and success in life.

Great efforts ore made by the Government of this country, by the clergy of all denominations, by the great in rank and wealth, by many of the employers of labour, and by a body of 100,000 schoolmasters and other teachers, whose sole occupation is to diffuse the benefits of education among all ranks, and especially among the poor.

These efforts are not attended with the success they deserve. One of her Majesty’s Inspectors, whose experience in the Eastern district has been large, considers that the school-period ceases at 10 years of age, while he gives the following very favourable account of the average acquirements of children of this age.

“You will find that if a child be well taught, at ten years of age he may he able to write fairly from dictation out of an ordinary reading hook; he will he decently acquainted with the four simple and compound rules; will have a sort of idea of grammar ; and a certain knowledge of general geography and map drawing. He will also read fairly and intelligently, and have, a certain knowledge of the Bible, and History of England as contained in elementary works. Advancing to the question, to what extent the education of such child can be carried? I hold, that enough attention has not been and is not even now paid to the acquisition of quick, easy, and complete methods of instruction. The art of education is as yet only in its infancy, and I believe that by the present improved, and to be improved, systems - by the complete education of teachers - the proper furnishing and fitting of schools - the due supply of books and apparatus - and the saving of time and labour now very frequently most fruitlessly expended, - it will ultimately result that the boy finishing school life at 10 years will really be better educated than the boy of 13 is now, even as the education of the boy of 10 now is very, very far superior to that which the boy of 14 received only 20 years back. Something also may be hoped from the improved condition and education of the parents of this class in the next generation.”

There are various modes proposed to continue the education of children and young people after they become productive labourers. The best of these plans - applicable to both town and country boys - is that those who begin to labour under 14 years of age should have two hours instruction daily from 7 till 9, before work commences; and that those above 14 should have two hours instruction in the evening of each day.

Another great educational problem, which had previously engaged the minds, and been affirmed as a probability by many, has been recently solved by Mr. Edwin Chadwick. The researches which have led to his conclusion, have extended among teachers and scholars in national schools, factory schools, and elsewhere, and they establish as a truth, "that the children of the working classes who study books only for three or four hours a day, and give the rest of their time to play and active labour, have brighter wits and more true knowledge than those who are at school both in the morning and the afternoon, and spend their evenings in preparing lessons.”

Employers of intelligent labour in the manufacturing districts have discovered the superiority of half-time scholars. In the agricultural districts, let a boy work half the day at school and half the day in the fields, and he brings the energy of health to studies never followed with a jaded mind, while he has time enough out of school for the digestion of his mental food, and it becomes, not a weight to be borne on his mind’s back, but a part of its life and growth and a source of new strength.

The schools which are established for children are chiefly designed for their instruction in the elements of knowledge. It is true that a certain amount of positive knowledge is also imparted in them, but those children who have attained the elements of reading, of writing, and of arithmetic, may afterwards, if so disposed, acquire any amount of knowledge.

The class of schools alluded to cannot impart much real knowledge to their pupils - considering the small portion of a child’s life thus occupied, and the early age at which school-time ceases, and labour commences. But they can and do give the means of acquiring knowledge hereafter, if at a later period of life, those who have conquered the first elements choose to educate themselves.

Edmund Stone, a self-educated mathematician, worked when a youth of eighteen in the gardens of the Duke of Argyle. The Duke, walking one day in his garden, observed a copy of Newton's Principia lying on the grass, and thinking it had been brought from his library, called someone to carry it back. Upon this, Stone claimed the book as his own. ‘Yours,’ replied the Duke, ‘Do you understand geometry, Latin, and Newton." "I know a little of them," replied the young man.

The Duke was surprised ; and having a taste for the sciences, he entered into conversation with the young mathematician. He asked him several questions ; and was astonished at the force, the accuracy, and the candour of his answers. "But how," said the Duke, "came you by the knowledge of all these things?" Stone replied, "A servant taught me, ten years since to read. Does one need to know any thing more than the twenty-four letters in order to learn everything else that one wishes?" The Duke’s curiosity redoubled: he sat down on a bank, and requested a detail of the whole process by which he had become o learned.

"I first learned to read," said Stone; "the masons were then at work upon your house. I approached them one day, and observed that the architect used a rule and compasses, and that he made calculations. I inquired what might be the meaning and use of these things, and I was informed that there was a science called arithmetic. I purchased a book of arithmetic and learned it. I was told there was another science called geometry; I bought the necessary books, and I learned geometry. By reading, I found that there were good books in these two sciences in Latin I bought a dictionary, and I learned Latin. I understood, also, that there were good books of the same kind in French; I bought a dictionary, and I learned French. And this, my Lord, is what I have done; it seems to me that we may learn everything when we know the twenty-four letters of the alphabet."

College - a place where a number of persons are collected for purposes of study.
Chemistry - the science which investigates the elements and properties of bodies.
Navigator - one who leads and directs ships.
Chronometer - an instrument for measuring time.
Ornithologist - one skilled in the knowledge of birds.
Crustacean - animals with jointed shells, as the lobster.
Squadron - a body of troops, drawn up in a square; a body of cavalry; a division of a fleet.

PARENTS of the middle class are generally anxious for the education of their children, for they know from daily experience, that neither success in business, nor advancement in life can be reasonably expected without what is termed a good education; that is, such an education as shall prepare and qualify them for the business or profession for which they are designed; while the rich have their public and private schools and colleges at which their children pursue such studies as are considered suitable for their condition in the world, whether for the higher professions, or for the service of the State.

But schools and colleges can only impart the materials of cultivation; it is the education which a man gives himself in ins home, his workshop, his field, his profession, which forms his character, and makes him able to act his path in life. This discipline in the business and duties of life is not to be learned from books, but from action.

There is a general impression in the manufacturing districts that the practical sagacity and experience of the uninstructed artizan, often contributes more to the success of different branches of trade and manufacture than science and art. And this is necessarily the case in the early stages of almost all discoveries and inventions, but only during the infancy of success. The fullest development of processes must depend, not only on mechanical skill, but on a knowledge of principles end resources which are beyond the reach of the uneducated workman, however accomplished he may be in the arts of observation and in manual operations. The perfection of discoveries and inventions is the result of education, of knowledge in chemistry, and other physical sciences, of mechanics and other useful arts - combined with thought, labour, and intelligence; while their application to manufactures, trade and commerce depends altogether upon the capitalist; and thus the practical sagacity and experience of the working man, the scientific acquisitions of the educated man, and the money of the man of wealth are made to promote the prosperity and happiness of the community.

Such applications of knowledge and capital have given us the steam-engine, gas, railways, locomotives, ocean-steamers, electric-telegraphs, and other marvellous results; many of which were pronounced impracticable, even in this generation.

We read of the successes of many of the great, wise, and good, who elevated themselves from humble positions by the force of their own character, without the help of name, fortune, or great acquirements, and it is useful to rend of such men.

From the barber’s shop rose Sir Richard Arkwright, the inventor of the spinning-jenny, and the founder of the cotton manufacture of Great Britain ; Lord Tenterden, one of the most distinguished of English Lord Chief Justices; and Turner, the very greatest among landscape painters.

The common class of day labourers has given us Brindley the engineer, Cook the navigator, and Burns the poet. Masons and bricklayers can boast of Ben Johnson, who worked at the building of Lincoln’s Inn, with a trowel in his hand and a book in his pocket, Edwards and Telford the engineers, Hugh Miller the geologist, and Allan Cunningham the writer and sculptor; whilst among distinguished carpenters we find the names of Inigo Jones the Architect, Harrison the chronometer-maker, John Hunter the physiologist, Romney and Opie the painters, Professor Leo the Orientalist, and John Gibson the Sculptor.

From the weaver class have sprung Simpson the Mathematician, Bacon the Sculptor, the two Milners, Adam Walker, John Foster, Wilson the ornithologist, Dr. Livingstone the missionary traveller, and Tannahill the poet. Shoemakers have given us Sir Cloudesly Shovel the great Admiral, Sturgeon the electrician, Samuel Drew the essayist, Gifford the editor of the ‘Quarterly Review,’ Bloomfield the poet, and William Carey the missionary, whilst Morrison another laborious missionary, was a maker of shoe-lasts. Very recently, a profound naturalist has been discovered in the person of a shoemaker at Banff, named Thomas Edwards, who while maintaining himself by his trade, has devoted his leisure to the study of natural science in all its branches, his researches in connexion with the smaller crustaceae having been rewarded by the discovery of a new species, to which the name of .PranziaEdwardsii has been given by naturalists.

Nor have tailors been altogether undistinguished, Jackson the painter having worked at that trade until he reached manhood. But what is perhaps more remarkable, one of the gallantest of British seamen, Admiral Hobson, who broke the boom at Vigo, in 1702, originally belonged to this calling. He was working as a tailor’s apprentice near Bonchurch, in the Isle of Wight, when the news flew through the village, that a squadron of man-of-war were sailing off the Island. He sprang from the shop-board, and ran down with his comrades to the beach, to gaze upon the glorious sight. The tailor-boy was suddenly inflamed with the ambition to be a sailor ; and springing into a boat, he rowed off to the squadron, gained the admiral’s ship, and was accepted as a volunteer. Years after, he returned to his native village full of honours, and dined off bacon and eggs in the cottage where he had worked as a tailor’s apprentice.

But perhaps the most interesting story of difficulties encountered and overcome by manful struggle, is that of Mr.W.S. Lindsay, the well-known shipowner. It was told by himself, in his own simple words, to the electors of Weymouth some years ago, in answer to an attack which had been made upon him by his political opponents. At the age of fourteen, he said, he had been left, an orphan boy, to push his way in the world. He left Glasgow for Liverpool with only four shillings and sixpence in his pocket; and so poor was he that the captain of the steamer had pity on him, and told him that ho would give him his passage if he would trim the coals in the coalhole. He did so, and thus worked his passage. He remembered that the fireman gave him a part of his homely dinner, and never did he eat a dinner with such relish, for he felt that he had worked for it and earned it; and he wished the young to listen to his statement, for he himself had derived a lesson from that voyage which he had never forgotten. At Liverpool, he remained for seven weeks before he could get employment: he abode in sheds, and his four and sixpence maintained him, until at last he found shelter in a West lndiaman. He entered as a boy, and before he was nineteen he had risen to the command of an lndiaman. At twenty-three he retired from the sea; his friends, who when he wanted assistance had given him none, having left him that which they could no longer keep. He settled on shore; his career had been rapid; he had acquired prosperity by close industry, by constant work, and by keeping ever in view the great principle - Do unto others as you would be done by.

Literal - real, according to the exact words used.
Metaphorical - having a meaning beyond the literal one; figurative.
Renovation - renewal, the act of forming anew.
Fundamental - a leading principle; the ground-work of a system.

EACH human being possesses about four hundred muscles, designed to serve him in performing the various acts of motion and exertion by which he is both literally and metaphorica1ly to make his way in the world; and, besides these, he has mental faculties, operating through the medium of organisation, and by which he experiences various sentiments, conducts various intellectual operations, and directs and controls the motions of his body.

It is by no means very generally known, that each of these bodily and mental powers is capable of being increased in a very considerable degree by judicious use, while they will flag and diminish from inaction, and be injured in another way by exercise amounting to excess. Thus, though individuals have been constituted, each with a different amount of bodily and mental strength, it is placed within the power of those who have but little, by exerting it properly, to make themselves equal to those who have more, but do not use it so well.

An explanation of the process by which exercise increases bodily power, is the only means we possess of impressing this invaluable truth. When any living part is called into activity, the processes of waste and renovation which are constantly going on in every part of the body, proceed with greater rapidity, and in due proportion to each other.

To meet this condition, the vessels and nerves become excited to higher action, and the supply of arterial or nutritive blood and of nervous energy becomes greater. When the active exercise ceases, the excitement thus given to the vital functions subsides, and the vessels and nerves return at length to their original state.

If the exercise be resumed frequently, and at moderate intervals, the increased action of the blood - vessels and nerves becomes more permanent, and does not sink to the same low degree as formerly, NUTRITION RATHER EXCEEDS WASTE - in other words, what they take in exceeds what they give out - and the part gains, consequently, in size, vigour, and activity.

On the other hand, if exercise be neglected, the vital functions decay from the want of their requisite stimulus; little blood is sent to parts, which in time become weakened, diminish in size, and at last shrivel and alter so much in appearance, as not to be recognisable.

Thus if an artery - the large artery which supplies the arm with blood, for example - be tied, and the flow of the blood obstructed, a change of structure immediately begins, and goes on progressively, till, at the end of a few weeks, what was formerly a hollow elastic tube, presented the appearance of a stiff cord. If, again, excessive exertion be indulged in, the vital powers of the part are exhausted; waste exceeds nutrition; and a loss of native energy, if not some general effect of a fatal kind, is the consequence.

These laws equally affect the bones, which might be supposed less liable to change from any such causes. If the bones be duly exercised in their business of administering to motion, the vessels which pervade them are fed more actively with blood, and they increase in dimensions, strength, and solidity. If they are not exercised, the stimulus required for the supply of blood to them becomes insufficient ; imperfect nutrition takes place; and the consequences are debility, softness, and unfitness for their office. It is ascertained that bones may be so much softened by inaction, as to become susceptible of being cut by a knife. In a less degree, the same cause will produce distortion and bad health.

It is of the utmost importance to observe, that the exercise of any particular limb does little besides improving the strength of that limb, and that, in order to increase our general strength, the whole frame must be brought into exercise. The blacksmith, by wielding his hammer increases the muscular volume and strength of his right arm only; or, if the rest of his body derive any advantage from his exercise, it is through the general movement which the wielding of a hammer occasions. One whose profession consists in dancing or leaping, for the same reason chiefly improves the muscles of his legs.
The right hands of most people by being more frequently employed than the left, become sensibly larger, as well as stronger. A still more striking illustration of the principle is to be found in a personal peculiarity which has been remarked in the inhabitants of Paris. Owing to the uneven nature of the pavement of that city, the people are obliged .to walk in a tripping manner on the front of their feet; a movement which calls the muscles of the calves of the legs into strong exertion. It is accordingly remarked, that a larger proportion of the people are distinguished by an uncommon bulk in this part of their persons, than in other cities.

In order, then, to maintain in a sound state the energies which nature has given us, and, still more particularly, to increase their amount, WE MUST EXERCISE THEM. If we desire to have a strong limb, we must exercise that limb; if we desire that the whole of our frame should be sound and strong, we must exercise the whole of our frame. Health and strength, when we possess them, are to be preserved and improved in no other way; for this is a fundamental law of our being. There are rules, however, for the application of these laws.

First, in order that exercise may be truly advantageous, the parts must be in a state of sufficient health to endure exertion. A system weakened by disease or long inaction must be exercised very sparingly, and brought on to greater efforts very gradually; otherwise the usual effects of over-exercise will follow. In no case must exercise be carried beyond what the parts are capable of bearing with ease; otherwise, as already mentioned, a loss of energy, instead of a gain, will be the consequence.

Secondly. Exercises, to be efficacious even in a healthy subject, must be excited, sustained, and directed by that nervous stimulus which gives the muscles the principal part of their strength, and contributes so much to the nutrition of parts in a state of activity. To explain this, it must be mentioned that to produce motion requires the co-operation of the muscular fibre with two sets of nerves, one of which conveys the command of the brain to the muscle, and causes its contraction, while the other conveys back to the brain the peculiar sense of the state of the muscle, by which we judge of the fitness of the degree of contraction which has been produced to accomplish the end desired, and which is obviously an indispensable piece of information to the mind in regulating the movements of the body

The nervous stimulus thus created, will enable a muscle in the living frame to bear a weight of a hundred pounds, while, if detached, it would be torn assunder by one of ten. This is what causes men in danger, or in the pursuit of some eagerly desired object, to perform such extraordinary feats of strength and activity. In order, then, to obtain the advantage of this powerful agent, we must be interested in what we are doing. A sport that calls up the mental energy, a walk towards a place which we are anxious to reach, or even an exercise which we engage in through a desire of invigorating our health and strength, will prove beneficial, when more of actual motion, performed languidly, may be nearly ineffectual.

Thirdly. The waste occasioned by exercise must be duly replaced by food; for, if there be any deficiency in this important requisite, the blood will soon cease to give that invigoration to the parts upon which increased health and strength depend.

MAN.

MY God I heard this day,
That none doth build a stately habitation,
But he that means to dwell therein.
What house more stately hath there been,
Or can be, than is Man ? to whose creation
All things are in decay.

Man is all symmetry,
Full of proportions, one limb to another,
And all to all the world besides:
Each part may call the farthest brother:
For head with foot hath private amity,
And both with moons and tides.

Nothing hath got so far,
But man hath caught and kept it, as his prey.
His eyes dismount the highest star:
He is, in little, all the sphere.
Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they
Find their acquaintance there.

For us the winds do blow;
The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow.
Nothing we see, but means our good,
As our delight, or as our treasure
The whole is, either our cupboard of food,
Or cabinet of pleasure.

The stars have us to bed;
Night draws the curtain; which the sun withdraws:
Music and light attend our head.
All things unto our flesh are kind
In their descent and being; to our mind
In their ascent and cause.

Each thing is full of duty:
Waters united are our navigation;
Distinguished, our habitation;
Below, our drink; above, our meat:
Both are our cleanliness. Hath one such beauty?
Then how are all things neat!

More servants wait on Man,
Than he’ll take notice of : in every path
He treads down that which doth befriend him,
When sickness makes him pale and wan.
Oh mighty love ! Man is one world, and hath
Another to attend him.

Since then, my God, thou hast
So brave a palace built; Oh, dwell in it,
That it may dwell with thee at last!
Till then, afford us so much wit,
That, as the world serves us, we may serve thee,
And both thy servants be.

- George Herbert.

THE SENSITIVE FACULTIES.

WHY has not Man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason, Man is not a fly.
Say what the use, were finer optics giv’n,
T’ inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav’n?
Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o’er,
To smart and agonize at ev’ry pore?
Or quick effluvia darting through the brain,
Die of a rose in aromatic pain?
If Nature thunder’d in his op’ning ears,
And stunn’d him with the music of the spheres,
How would he wish that Heav’n had left him still,
The whisp’ring zephyr, and the purling rill ?
Who finds not Providence all good and wise,
Alike in what He gives, and what denies?

Far as creation’s ample range extends,
The scale of sensual, mental pow’rs ascends:
Mark how it mounts, to Man’s imperial race,
From the green myriads in the peopled grass:
What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme,
The mole’s dim curtain, and the lynx’s beam:
Of smell, the headlong lioness between,
And hound sagacious on the tainted green:
Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,
To that which warbles through the vernal wood ?
The spider’s touch, how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:
In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true
From pois’nous herbs extracts the healing dew P
How instinct varies in the grov’ling swine,
Compar’d, half-reas’ning elephant with thine!

* * *

What uf the foot, ordained the dust to tread,
Or hand, to toil, aspir’d to be the head?
What if the head, the eye, or ear repin’d
To serve mere engines to the ruling mind?
Just as absurd for any part to claim
To be another, in this gen’ral frame:
Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains,
The great directing MIND OF ALL ordains.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;
That, chang’d through all, and yet in all the same;
Great in the earth, as in th’ ethereal frame;
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,
Lives through all Life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent;
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;
As full, as perfect, in vile Man that mourns,
As the rapt Seraph, that adores and burns:
To him no high, no low, no great, no small
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.

- Pope.

THE HAND.

WHAT is it, fashioned wondrously, that, twin-born with the brain,
Marks man from every meaner thing that bounds across the plain,
Or gambols in the mighty deep, or floats in summer air?
What is the help meet for the mind, no lesser life may share?
It is the Hand, the Human Hand, interpreter of will –
Was ever servant yet so great, and so obedient still?
Of all Creation’s mysteries with which the world is rife,
It seems a marvel to my soul but second unto life!
How weak a thing of flesh it is, yet think what it has done,
And ask from poor idolaters why it no worship won.
How could the lordly forest trees first bow their heads to man,
When with their ruined limbs he delved where veins of metal ran!
The harp is roused by fingers for, where clinging jewels glow
With light upon the awak’ning hand, like sunbeams upon snow;
Entranced music’s soul returns once more to earth again,
A vassal to the hand that wills a gay or pensive strain.
The painter bodies forth ideas, which on the canvas live,
The sculptor bids the shapeless stone a form of beauty give;
Wise Egypt’s giant Pyramids by human hands were piled,
To wrestle still with conquering time, though centuries have smiled,
With gentle touch to think how they sweep man from where he stands,
Yet linger o’er the records of his wonder-working hands!
But thought is lost in mazy dreams of all the wondrous band
Of things and deeds that owe their birth unto the Human Hand!

- Camilla Toulmin.

THE LEAF.

I.

Thou art curl’d and tender and smooth, young leaf!
With a creamy fringe of down,
As thou slippest at touch of the light, young leaf,
From thy cradling case of brown.

Thou art soft as an infant’s hand, young leaf,
When it fondles a mother’s cheek;
And thy elders are cluster’d around, young leaf,
To shelter the fair and weak.

To welcome thee out from the bud, young leaf,
There are airs from the east and the west;
And the rich dew glides from the clouds, young leaf,
To nestle within thy breast.

The great wide heaven, and the earth, young leaf,
Are around, and thy place for thee.
Come forth! for a thread, art thou, young leaf,
In the web-work of mystery.

II.

Thou art full and firmly set, green leaf,
Like a strong man upon the earth;
And thou showest a sturdy front, green leaf,
As a shield to thy place of birth.

There is pleasant rest in thy shade, green leaf,
And thou makest a harp for the breeze;
And the blossom that bends from thy base, green leaf,
Is loved by the summer bees.

The small bird’s nest on the bough, green leaf,
Has thee for an ample roof,
And the butterflies cool their wings, green leaf,
On thy branching braided woof.

Thou art doing thy part of good, green leaf,
And shedding thy ray of grace:
There’s a lesson written in thee, green leaf,
For the eye of man to trace.

III.

Thou art rough, and shrivell’d and dry, old leaf,
And hast lost the fringe of down:
And the green of thy youth is gone, old leaf,
And turn’d to yellow and brown.

There are sisters of thine trod in clay, old leaf,
And in swollen rivers drown’d;
Ah, but thou tremblest much, old leaf,
Looking down to the greedy ground.

The autumn blast, with thy doom, old leaf,
Cometh quickly, and will not spare;
Thou art kin to the dust to-day, old leaf,
And to-morrow thou liest there.

For thy work of life is done, old leaf,
And now there is need of thy death;
Be content! ‘Twill be all for the best, old leaf,
There is love in the slaying breath.

- From “Household Words.”

HUMAN LIFE.

The lark has sung his carol in the sky;
The bees have hummed their noon-tide lullaby;
Still in the vale the village bells ring round,
Still in Llewellyn-hall the jests resound;
For now the caudle-cup is circling there,
Now, glad at heart, the gossips breathe their prayer,
And, crowding, stop the cradle to admire
The babe, the sleeping image of his sire.

A few short years - and then these sounds shall hail
The day again, and gladness fill the vale;
So soon the child a youth, the youth a man,
Eager to run the race his fathers ran.
Then the huge ox shall yield the broad sirloin,
The ale, new brewed, in floods of amber shine:
And, basking in the chimney’s ample blaze,
‘Mid many a tale told of his boyish days,
The nurse shall cry, of all her ills beguiled,
“ ‘Twas on these knees he sate so oft and smiled."

And soon again shall music swell the breeze
Soon, issuing forth, shall glitter through the trees
Vestures of nuptial white; and hymns be sung,
And violets scattered round; and old and young,
In every cottage-porch with garlands green,
Stand still to gaze, and, gazing, bless the scene;
While, her dark eyes declining, by his side
Moves in her virgin-veil the gentle bride.

And once, alas ! nor in a distant hour,
Another voice shall come from yonder tower;
When in dim chambers long black weeds are seen,
And weeping’s heard where only joy bas been;
When by his children borne, and from his door
Slowly departing to return no more,
He rests in holy earth with them that went before.

And such is Human Life - so gliding on,
It glimmers like a meteor, and is gone!
Yet is the tale, brief though it be, as strange,
As full methinks of wild and wondrous change,
As any that the wandering tribes require,
Stretched in the desert round their evening fire;
As any sung of old in hall or bower
To minstrel-harps at midnight’s witching hour!

- Rogers.

THE CHARITIES OF THE POOR.

THERE is a thought so purely blest,
That to its use I oft repair,
When evil breaks my spirit’s rest,
And pleasure is but varied care;
A thought to gild the stormiest skies,
To deck with flowers the bleakest moor,-
A thought whose home is paradise,-
The charities of poor to poor.

It were not for the rich to blame,
If they, whom fortune seems to scorn,
Should vent their ill-content and shame
On others less or more forlorn:
But, that the veriest needs of life
Should be dispens’d with freer hand,
Than all their stores and treasures rife –
Is not for them to understand.

To give the stranger’s children bread,
Of your precarious board the spoil, -
To watch your helpless neighbour’s bed,
And sleepless meet the morrow’s toil;
The gifts, not proffer’d once alone,
The daily sacrifice of years, -
And when all else to give is gone,
The precious gifts of love and tears!

Therefore, lament not, honest soul!
That Providence holds back from thee
The means thou might’st so well control-
Those luxuries of charity.
Manhood is nobler, as thou art;
And, should some chance thy coffers fill,
How art thou sure to keep thine heart,
To hold unchang’d thy loving will?

Wealth, like all other power, is blind,
And bears a poison in its core,
To taint the best, if feeble, mind,
And madden that debas’d before.
It is the battle, not the prize,
That fills the hero’s breast with joy
And industry the bliss supplies,
Which mere possession might destroy.
- R.M. Milnes.

THE COMMON LOT.

ONCE, in the flight of ages past,
There lived a man—and who was he?
Mortal ! howe’er thy lot be cast,
That man resembled thee.

Unknown the region of his birth;
The land in which he died, unknown;
His name has perish’d from the earth:
This truth survives alone ;-

That joy, and grief, and hope, and fear,
Alternate triumphed in his breast:
His bliss and woe - a smile, a tear
Oblivion hides the rest.

The bounding pulse, the languid limb,
The changing spirits’ rise and fall;
We know that these were felt by him,
For these e felt by all.

He suffered - but his pangs are o’er;
Enjoyed - but his delights are fled;
Haed friends - his friends are now no more;
And foes - his foes are dead.

He loved - but whom be loved, the grave
Hath lost in its unconscious womb
Oh, she was fair ! but nought could save
Her beauty from the tomb.

He saw - whatever thou hast seen;
Encountered - all that troubles thee:
He was - whatever-thou hast been;
He is - what thou shalt be!

The rolling seasons, day and night,
Sun, moon, and stars, the earth and main, -
Erewhile his portion, - life and light;
To him exist in vain.

The clouds and sunbeams, o’er his eye
That once their shades and glory threw,
Have left in yonder silent sky
No vestige where they flew.

The annals of the human race,
Their ruins, since the world began,
Of him afford no other trace
Than this, - THERE LIVED A MAN!

- J. Montgomery.

DEPENDENCE ON DIVINE PROVIDENCE.

WHEN my breast labours with oppressive care,
And o’er my cheek descends the falling tear,
While all my warring passions are at strife,
Oh, let me listen to the words of life
Raptures deep-felt his doctrines did impart,
And thus he raised from earth the drooping heart.

Think not, when all your scanty stores afford,
Is spread at once upon the sparing board;
Think not, when worn the homely robe appears
While on the roof the howling tempest bears,
What farther shall this feeble life sustain,
And what shall clothe these shivering limbs again.
Say, does not life its nourishment exceed ?
And the fair body its investing weed?

Behold ! and look away your low despair,-
See the light tenants of the barren air:
To them, nor stores, nor granaries belong;
Nought but the woodland and the pleasing song
Yet your kind, Heavenly Father bends his eye
On the least wing that flits along the sky.
To him they sing, when spring renews the plain,
To him they cry, in winter’s pinching reign;
Nor is their music nor their plaint in vain:
He hears the gay, and the distressful call;
And with unsparing bounty fills them all.

Observe the rising lily’s snowy grace,
Observe the various vegetable race;
They neither toil, nor spin, but careless grow;
Yet, see how warm they blush, how bright they glow;
What regal vestments can with them compare, -
What king so shining, or what queen so fair?
If ceaseless, thus the fowls of heaven he feeds;
If, o’er the fields, such lucid robes he spreads:
Will he not care for you, ye faithless say?
Is he unwise? or, are ye less than they?

- Thomson.

THE COFFEE SLIPS.

WHENE’ER I fragrant coffee drink,
I of the generous Frenchman think
Whose noble perseverance bore
The tree to Martinico’s shore,
While yet her colony was new,
And island-products but a few.

Two shoots from off a coffee-tree
He carries with him o’er the sea.
Each tender little coffee-slip
He waters daily in the ship.

But soon alas the darling pleasure,
Of watching this his precious treasure,
Is like to fade ;- for water fails
On board the ship in which he sails,
Now all the reservoirs are shut,
The men on short allowance put;
So small a drop is each man’s share,
Few leavings you may think there are
To moisten these poor coffee-plants;
But he supplies their gasping wants;
Ev’n from his own dry parched lips,
He spares it for his coffee-slips.

He sees them droop for want of more;-
Yet when they reach the destined shore,
With pride the heroic gardener sees,
A living sap still in his trees.

The islanders his praise resound;
Coffee-plantations rise around,
And Martinico loads her ships,
With produce of those dear-saved slips.

- A.L. Barbauld.

A HARVEST HYMN.

PRAISE ye the Lord for His bountiful favour,-
O let the people be glad and rejoice!
High shall the hymn, an acceptable savour,
Rise to His throne from the heart and the voice:
For the Great King in His royal redundance
Fills us with blessings enough and to spare,
Fruits in full plenty, and bread in abundance,-
Glory to GOD for His fatherly care!

O all ye nations! from season to season
Kindly commands He the earth that it yield;
Then let us render in right and in reason –
Gratitude due for the gifts of the field;
Diligence, faith, and contentment are Duty,
And if He blesses them all with increase
Thank Him, that earth in its bounty and beauty
Pours on us wealth, and abundance, and peace!

We are His children, and GOD is our Father;
Then will we love one another the more;-
While He is generous, let us the rather
Thank Him for blessing the basket and store!
Earth is Man’s heritage, granted by heaven;
If the Great Master has made us His heirs
Here and hereafter redeem’d and forgiven,-
O let us greet Him with praises and pray’rs!

- M.F. Tupper.

THE CLAIMS OF LABOUR.

LAYING in dust the giant arm of strife,
Upraised in menace o’er a troubled nation,
Let warring parties join to cheer the life
Of those who languish in a lowly station.

The germs of good with which their minds are fraught
Let genial kindness foster into bearing;
Feed them with breed for which their hands have wrought;
Weave from the sheep warm raiment for their wearing.

Teach every soul the lore of Christian truth,
On which amid the peace of home to ponder;
Train them in right from early budding youth;
Close up the paths that tempt their feet to wander.

Unlock the jealous treasure-vaults of Art,
And spread their wealth before the sons of Labour;
That all may find in every crowded mart
Topics for wholesome converse with their neighbour.

Let Printing multiply the works of Mind,
To form their taste, and guide them to reflection;
Thought is the common heirloom of mankind,
No privilege of any favour’d section.

And thou, who boastest an ennobled name,
Which Time has gilded with a storied splendour,
Win for thyself upon the page of Fame
The title of the poor man’s stout defender !

Thou wieldest in thy hand the might of Laws;
Thou canst restrain the wicked from oppressing;
Therefore be foremost in the sacred cause,
And earn the guerdon of thy country’s blessing!

- From “Household Words.”

THE WEAVER’S SONG.

WEAVE, brothers, weave! - Swiftly throw,
The shuttle athwart the loom
And show us how brightly your flowers grow
That have beauty, but not perfume;
Come, show us the rose with a hundred dyes,
The lily that hath no spot,
The violet deep as your true-love’s eyes,
And the little forget-me-not.
Sing, sing, brothers! weave and sing;
‘Tis good both to sing and weave;
Tis better to work than live idle,
‘Tie better to Sing than grieve.

Weave, brothers, weave !- Weave and bid.
The colours of sunset glow:
Let grace in each gliding thread be hid,
Let beauty about ye blow
Let your skein be long, and your silk be fine,
And your hands both firm and sure;
And time nor chance shall your work untwine,
But all - like a truth - endure !
So, sing, brothers, &c.

Weave, brothers, weave ! - Toil is ours;
But toil is the lot of man;
One gathers the fruit, one gathers the flowers,
One soweth the seed again,!
There is not a creature, from England’s king
To the peasant that delves the soil,
That knows half the pleasure the seasons bring,
If he have not his share of toil.
So, sing, brothers, &c.

- Barry Cornwall

THE SONG OF THE SHIRT.

With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread - Stitch! stitch! stitch! In poverty, hunger, and dirt, And still with a voice of dolorous pitch She sang the "Song of the Shirt!"

"Work! work! work! While the cock is crowing aloof!  And work! Work! Work! Till the stars shine through the roof! It's O! to be a slave Along with the barbarous Turk, Where woman has never a soul to save, If this is Christian work!

"Work! Work! Work! Till the brain begins to swim; Work! Work! Work! Till the eyes are heavy and dim! Seam, and gusset, and band, Band, and gusset, and seam, Till over the buttons I fall asleep, And sew them on in a dream!

"Oh, Men! with Sisters dear! Oh, men! with Mothers and Wives! It is not linen you're wearing out, But human creatures' lives! Stitch! Stitch! Stitch! In poverty, hunger and dirt,    Sewing at once, with a double thread, A Shroud as well as a Shirt.

"But why do I talk of Death? That Phantom of grisly bone, I hardly fear its terrible shape, It seems so like my own - It seems so like my own, Because of the fasts I keep; Oh, God! that bread should be so dear And flesh and blood so cheap!  

" Work! Work! Work! My labour never flags; And what are its wages? A bed of straw, A crust of bread - and rags. That shattered roof - this naked floor - A table - a broken chair ! And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank For sometimes falling there!

"Work Work! Work! Work! From weary chime to chime,  Work! Work! Work! As prisoners work for crime! Band, and gusset, and seam, Seam, and gusset, and band, Till the heart is sick, and the brain benumbed, As well as the weary hand.

" Work! Work! Work! In the dull December light, And work! Work! Work! When the weather is warm and bright ! While underneath the eaves The brooding swallows cling As if to show me their sunny backs And twit me with the spring.

"Oh! but to breathe the breath Of the cowslip and primrose sweet ! With the sky above my head, And the grass beneath my feet; For only one short hour To feel as I used to feel,     Before I knew the woes of want And the walk that costs a meal!

"Oh! but for one short hour! A respite however brief! No blessed leisure for Love or Hope, But only time for Grief! A little weeping would ease my heart, But in their briny bed My tears must stop, for every drop Hinders needle and thread!"    

With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread –
Stitch! stitch! stitch! In poverty, hunger, and dirt, And still with a voice of dolorous pitch, Would that its tone could reach the Rich! — She sang this "Song of the Shirt!"

- Thomas Hood.

INDUSTRY.

TRAIN up thy children, England! in the way
Of righteousness, and feed them with the bread
Of wholesome doctrine. Where hast thou thy mines
But in their industry?
Thy bulwarks where but in their breast?
Thy might but in their arms?
Shall not their numbers therefore be thy wealth,
Thy strength, thy power, thy safety, and thy pride?
Oh, grief then, grief and shame,
If in this flourishing land
There should be dwellings where the new-born babe
Doth bring unto its parent’s soul no joy!
Where squalid poverty
Receives it at its birth,
And on her wither’d knees
Gives it the scanty food of discontent!

- Southey

TREES

AND forth they pass, with pleasure forward led,
Joying to hear the birds’ sweet harmony,
Which, therein shrouded from the tempest’s dread,
Seemed in their song to scorn the cruel sky;
Much can they praise the trees so straight and high,
The sailing pine, the cedar proud and tall,
The vine-prop elm, the poplar never dry,
The builder oak, sole king of forest all;
The aspen, good for staves; the cypress, funeral.

The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors
And poets sage ; the fir that weepeth still,
The willow, worn of forlorn paramours,
The yew, obedient to the bender’s will,
The birch for shafts, the sallow for the mill,
The myrrh sweet bleeding of the bitter wound,
The warlike beech, the ash for nothing ill,
The fruitful olive, and the plantain round,
The carver holm, the maple seldom inward sound.

- Spenser.

THE BUILDERS.

“Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house, a world; and beyond its world, a heaven . . . Build, therefore, your own world “ - Emerson.
“Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. Psalm cxxvii. 1.

ALL are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of time;
Some with massive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme.

Nothing useless is, or low,
Each thing in its place is best;
And what seems but idle show,
Strengthens and supports the rest.

For the structure that we raise,
Time is with materials filled;
Our to-days and yesterdays
Are the blocks with which we build.

Truly shape and fashion these,
Leave no yawning gaps between;
Think not, because no man sees,
Such things will remain unseen.

In the elder days of art,
Builders wrought with greatest care
Each minute and unseen part,
For the gods are everywhere.

Let us do our work as well,
Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the house where gods may dwell
Beautiful, entire, and clean.

Else our lives are incomplete,
Standing in these walls of time;
Broken stairways, where the feet
Stumble as they seek to climb.

Build to-day, then, strong and sure,
With a firm and ample base;
And ascending and secure
Shall to-morrow find its place.

Thus alone can we attain
To those turrets, where the eye
Sees the world as one vast plain,
And one boundless reach of sky.

- Longfellow

LOVE, HOPE, AND PATIENCE IN EDUCATION.

O’ER wayward childhood would’st thou hold firm rule,
And sun thee in the light of happy faces;
Love, Hope, and Patience, these must be thy graces,
And in thine own heart let them first keep school.
For as old Atlas on his broad neck places
Heaven’s starry globe, and there sustains it ; - so
Do these upbear the little world below
Of education, - Patience, Love, and Hope.

Methinks, I see them group’d in seemly show,
The straiten’d arms uprais’d, the palms aslope,
And robes that touching as adown they flow,
Distinctly blend, like snow emboss’d in snow.
O part them never ! If Hope prostrate lie,
Love too will sink and die.
But Love is subtle, and doth proof derive
From her own life that Hope is yet alive;

And bending o’er, with soul-transfusing eyes,
And the soft murmurs of the mother dove,
Woos hack the fleeting spirit, and half supplies; -
Thus Love repays to Hope what Hope first gave to Love.
Yet haply there will come a weary day,
When overtask’d at length
Both Love and Hope beneath the load give way.
Then with a statue’s smile, a statue’s strength
Stands the mute sister, Patience, nothing loth
And both supporting does the work of both.

- Coleridge

THE YOUNG TREE.

A boy saw his father planting a wild apple-tree.

“What are you going to do with that misshapen thing?” asked the boy. “I am sure, I would not allow it room in the garden.”

But the father answered: “Do not judge rashly, my boy. Do you know this tree, which you call a misshapen thing ?”

“Know it “ said the boy. “One may well see what it is?”

“Its outward form you see,” said the father, “but not what is hidden therein. Thus unsightly little tree may become a high and beautiful one. It may bear flowers and fruit in a few years, to gladden and refresh us. As yet it is not able to do so, for the power is still hidden and weak by which this result will one day be produced.”

After some time, William saw his father again at the tree. He had put a stake into the ground, and was tying the tree to it.

“Why are you doing that ?“ asked the boy. “You take away the tree’s liberty.”

The father answered: “I do so, that the wind may not break it, or throw it to the ground, and that it may grow up slender and straight.”

Then the father cut several twigs from the tree, loosened the ground all round, and surrounded it with thorns to keep off the cattle.”

“See,” said the father, “I love the little tree for the power that lies hidden within it. Therefore I take care that this hidden power may grow and prosper.”

In the beginning of the next spring, the father took the boy again to the tree. He had cut a graft from another fruit-tree. Now he took his knife, and with one cut separated the crown from the little tree. “Oh, what a pity !’ exclaimed the boy. “Now all the trouble is lost.”

But the father smiled, and grafted the twig on the stump of the tree, binding it up carefully. Then he said: “Behold, if the tree had remained in the forest, it would have grown up at hazard, crooked and rugged, and would never have brought forth edible fruit. But I have guided its growth and its intrinsic virtue. Before spring appears in his full vigour, I have given the nobler graft to the tree that it may direct its growing strength thereon, and bear in future lovely flowers and fruit.”

Soon the tree spread forth twigs and branches, and was pleasant to look upon. For it had buds and flowers, and in autumn the twigs were bent by the abundance of gold and ruddy apples.

“What do you think now ?” asked the boy’s father.

“Oh!” answered he joyfully, “it is a dear and grateful little tree !”

“Behold,” continued the father “how it extends its laden branches towards you Well, I give it to you, William. From henceforth it shall belong to you, for it has now reached its destiny.”

- Krummacher’s Fables.

EXERCISE.

Toil and be strong. Some love the manly foils;
The tennis some ; and some the graceful dance;
Others, more hardy, range the purple heath
Or naked stubble; where from field to field
The sounding coveys urge, their labouring flight!
Eager amid the rising cloud to pour
The gun’s unerring thunder.-

But if through genuine tenderness of heart,
Or secret want of relish for the game,
You shun the glories of the chase, nor care
To haunt the peopled stream; the garden yields
A soft amusement, a humane delight.
To raise the insipid nature of the ground,
Or tame its savage genius to the grace
Of careless sweet rusticity; that seems
The amiable result of happy chance
Is to create; and gives a godlike joy,
Which every year improves. Nor thou disdain
To check the lawless riot of the trees,
To plant the groves or turn the barren mould.
Thrice happy days! in rural labours past:
Blest winter nights ! when, as the genial firs
Cheers the old Hall, his cordial family
With soft domestic arts the hours beguile,
And pleasing talk that starts no timorous fame,
With witless wantonness to hunt it down:
Or through the Fairy-land of tale or song
Delighted wander, in fictitious fates
Engaged, and all that strikes humanity;
Till, lost in fable, they the stealing hour
Of timely rest forget. Sometimes, at eve,
His neighbours lift the latch, and bless unbid
His festal roof; while, o’er the light repast
And sprightly cups, they mix in social joy;
And through the maze of conversation trace
Whate’er amuses or improves the mind.

- Armstrong

ADVANTAGES OF EXERCISE TO HEALTH.

AH! what avail the largest gifts of heaven
When drooping health and spirits go amiss ?
How tasteless then whatever can be given
Health is the vital principle of bliss,
And exercise of health - in proof of this,
Behold the wretch who flings his life away,
Soon swallowed in disease’s sad Abyss
While he whom toil has braced, or manly play,
Has light as air each limb, each thought as clear as day.

Oh! who can speak the vigorous joys of health,
Unclogged the body, unobscured the mind;
The morning rises gay; with pleasing stealth
The temperate evening falls serene and kind.
In health the wiser brutes true gladness find:
See how the young lambs frisk along the meads
As May comes on, and wakes the balmy wind;
Rampant with joy, their joy all joy exceeds;
Yet what but high-strung health this dancing pleasure breeds ?

I care not, Fortune, what you me deny;
You cannot rob me of free Nature’s grace,
You cannot shut the windows of the sky,
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns by living stream at eve:
Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace,
And I their toys to the rich children leave;
Of fancy, reason, virtue nought can me bereave!

- Thomson.