that their power of mischief is almost entirely destroyed. In country districts there is generally less to poison the air than in towns, and the air has more free scope it gets at things and places more readily, and thus ventilates more thoroughly; and this is one reason why the country is generally healthier than the town. But besides ventilating herself, nature, or to speak more correctly, the God of nature, has taught certain of his creatures the art. The most striking and interesting instance of this is in the case of bees. What causes the buzz which you ever hear in a bee-hive? It is not the bees flying through the hive, for their movements there are necessarily performed on foot. Examine the entrance of a beehive, and you will observe some two or three dozen of them hard at work, flapping with their wings, as if their very life depended on their efforts. And so it does. The beehive has no window, and no ventilation-tubes. The bees are far too wise to breathe over again and again the used-up air of their neighbours and of themselves. constant flapping of the wings is just their way of introducing fresh the vital fluid on which their life and their health depend. They are not morbidly afraid of draughts, or of catching cold. No order is ever given by the queen-bee to stop the ventilatorbees, and close the openings of the hive. She knows

That

too well the value of fresh air to do anything so foolish. It would be like closing the hatches over the hold of a ship-a thing which is done only by the animal that naturalists characterize as Homo Sapiens-Man the wise.

The strong prejudice that often exists against fresh air is very lamentable. In cold weather, impure air is actually prized for its warmth; the members of families sleep in close proximity, and carefully exclude the fresh air, because it is cold and the other is warm. How little they calculate the price of the ill-gotten warmth! A man in health requires not less than 150 or 160 cubic feet of fresh air every hour. The consequence of breathing the polluted air of a room where many human beings lie huddled together is, that in the morning they awake weak and languid, and often a dram is deemed necessary to stimulate their prostrate energies. Oh but, people say, draughts of cold air are most hurtful things, bringing rheumatisms and aches and agues of every kind. It is true that if a strong current of very cold air be introduced into a room full of very hot air, and if a somewhat delicate person be sitting in the current, the effect will be bad. But this is just leaping from one extreme to the other. Ventilation should be so managed that no such current shall be formed.

The subject is one to which, as yet, architects, in planning houses, have given almost no attention whatever, otherwise it might be easy to provide ventilation without any hurtful draughts. In 1834, a building in Glasgow, called "the Barracks," was ventilated by a shaft in an ingenious but simple way. Before ventilation fifty-seven cases of typhus occurred in two months; after ventilation only four occurred in eight years. Two things we would most specially urge; and for both of them we have the most earnest advocacy of one whom all should respect-Miss Nightingale: first, that wherever a sleeping apartment is small, a portion of the window, or at least the room-door be left open during the night to admit pure air; and second, that whenever there is sickness in a room, most particular attention be paid to the ventilation. If it be otherwise, the poisonous vapours from the sickbed will fill the room, becoming more and more destructive the closer the doors and windows are kept; the feeblest will be the first to catch the infection, and these usually are the children. If inevitable disease has slain thousands, bad air has slain tens of thousands.

Kindred to bad air among the causes of disease, is want of exercise. Among working men, many, from the very nature of their employment, are abun

But others

dantly provided with bodily exercise. are not. Generally it is remarked that, other things being equal, the most sedentary employments are the least healthy. Clerks, tailors, dress-makers, and the like, furnish a very unusual proportion of the victims of consumption. The case of such persons, and also the case of females whose work in the family is wholly in-door, is very critical. In the case of carpenters, masons, smiths, and others, the great amount of physical exercise goes far to make up for the want of fresh air at home. For the benefit of exercise to the health lies in this, that it makes the process of breathing more rapid and more vehement; it thus introduces more fresh air into the lungs in a given time, and provides such a supply of oxygen for the blood, that the deficiency of what is provided by night in the crowded chamber is hardly felt. But pity those who, without any vigorous exercise, spend their whole days and nights in a confined and contaminated atmosphere! Every one knows the benefit, often derived in a time of sickness, from going to the country. One thing that makes the country more healthful than the town is, that more exercise is commonly taken, and more fresh air inhaled. It may often happen that persons in feeble health cannot go to the country. If so, the next best thing is to endeavour to bring the country to

them. Let them provide fresh air for the lungs, and take more out-of-door exercise; that is so far equivalent to bringing the country to them. We have known persons oppressed with headache and languor who experienced such palpable benefit from a walk, that they could reckon with almost absolute certainty, that at a certain point of the road all feeling of headache and languor would be gone. How simple, yet effective, are the remedies of nature !

Filth of every sort must be set down among the enemies of health. Even to enumerate all the forms in which this foe is apt to appear, would be a long process, for their name is legion. But we must briefly advert to three-affecting severally three things which it is most essential to keep clean-the skin, the clothes, and the bedding.

As to the skin, its structure is very remarkable, and its demand for cleanliness is most imperative. Examined with the microscope, the skin is found to be pierced with little holes, so numerous and so close that a shilling would cover several thousands, and the whole number is reckoned at three millions. Further examination shows that these holes are the mouths or openings of three millions of tubes, which, if joined together and stretched out in a line, would amount to about thirty miles. These tubes are the drains with which God has furnished the body to