same time, that with such a periphery as many a city has, moderately policed as all our cities are, the guardians of the law must needs be Argus-eyed and nearly ubiquitous, always to prevent the nuisance of improper dumping, especially as much of it is stealthily done after night-fall. When, therefore, we consider the intrinsic difficulties which a city encounters, from the nature of the case, in enforcing sanitary conditions, and the comparative ease with which they could be reached in the country, the difference in sanitary knowledge and practice as between city and country is amazing.

We think that we have shown, although briefly, without unduly entering into details, that in both city and country the ills which flesh is reputed to be heir to might be largely abated if people generally were more conversant with the laws of life, as to air, light, warmth, and exercise. There are, however, many other points as to these laws upon which we shall have occasion to touch when we come to detailed instruction in reference to them in the following pages. The moral of what has heretofore been remarked is that the law of life, which is fundamentally that of health, is that the tissues of the body, down to the ultimate cells of which they are composed, shall freely bathe in oxygen, and the organism reject the carbonic acid which represents its poisonous waste. Fresh, highly oxygenated air, is not merely the breath of the nostrils; the nostrils are but the channels for conveying it to the tissues. The organism craves oxygen in every tissue, craves the actinic or chemical rays of the sun, and light and warmth. It demands in moderation exercise of function, because, however admirably parts were originally endowed, they cease, from neglect or disuse, to preserve their pristine integrity. And so complex and correlated is the mechanism of the system that one part cannot be deranged without injuriously affecting others in an ever-widening circle. Not less would we seek to impress upon

the reader the fact that through the influence of mind upon body health is concerned in the education and excitation of the spiritual part of being, through all influences, including nature and art, which raise the mind above the sordid cares of life. It is, in fine, through the deployment in moderation of all the faculties of mind and body that they receive the strength and equipoise which represent perfect being.

CHAPTER II.

THE REGULATIVE LAW OF LIFE AND GROWTH.

T is indispensable, for realizing the significance of natural laws

IT

relating to health and beauty, that one should first of all understand the regulative law of all life, that which makes any manifestation of life what it is at any stage, makes all living things, mankind included, what they are,-the law of evolution. It will therefore be necessary, before proceeding further, to give the true interpretation of this law, which is not only popularly misunderstood, but, despite all the discussion of it by scientific men, is as to some points often misconceived and misstated in quarters otherwise marked by intelligence and education. Why this should be so is not easily solved, unless it may be ascribed to the circumstance that very many persons have not examined at first-hand the works which have striven to demonstrate the existence of the law, but have received at second-hand the interpretations, adverse criticisms, and ridicule of it engendered in the heat of controversy. Certain it is, however, that although the most prominent modern enunciation of the law was at first received, save by a very few, with unbounded dissent, some of its stanchest scientific opponents were gradually won over to a recognition of it, which now includes, almost without exception, save as to details, the whole generation of scientific men which has arisen since its most remarkable modern affirmation.

But it is not, at least at first, intended to speak here as to the truth or falsity of the alleged law. We will therefore revert to the point of popular misinterpretation of its meaning, as stated. In brief, divested of all that is extraneous, the popular notion of this alleged law, as advocated by Darwin, is that man originates from a monkey. Charles Lamb, it will be remembered,

spoke in fun, without a thought of anything else, of monkeys as his poor relations. That is, however, we believe, the strictly average popular notion of Darwin's scientific conception, with not a particle of fun about it, but in sober, serious earnest. Beyond that strictly popular view, through varying degrees of misinformation, we find a large amount of what Darwin wrote, either misinterpreted or else so inadequately stated as to give the falsest of impressions. This is not matter for great surprise to any one who has observed among mankind the tendency to seek the lines of least resistance, the saving of trouble, by adopting at second-hand opinions which can be obtained at firsthand only by labor. There is, however, to our knowledge one extremely surprising source of misinformation. The "Encyclopædia Britannica " stands pre-eminent among works of its kind as embodying the most learned and thorough information on all important subjects. But, notwithstanding this, the reference to Darwin, under the article "Lamarck," is most misleading. The author of the article says:—

It is therefore only the sufficiency of the Lamarckian hypothesis to explain the first commencement of new organs which is in question, if evolution by the mere operation of forces acting in the inorganic world be granted; and surely the Darwinian theory is equally helpless to account for the beginnings of a new organ, while it demands as imperatively that every stage in the assumed hereditary development of an organ must have been useful.

Just preceding that statement the author had remarked :—

Thus, for example, neither theory considers that it has to deal, not with crude heaps of functional organs, but with exquisitely orderly forms, nor accounts for the symmetrical first appearance of parts or for sex; nor, though Lamarck tried hard, has he or any later writer reduced to physical law the rise of consciousness in association with structures which in their physical relations are mere mechanisms capable of reflex actions.

But, as generally understood, Lamarck's theory assumes that structure may make its beginning through need and correspondent reflex action simulating desire; whereas Darwin's theory assumes no such thing, but that the structure, however rudimentary, already exists. He illustrates his idea in one place