of the water, to make sure that he shall not escape up the side of the basin. We have in a much afflicted flea country seen many fleas caught in this way.

When, during the day, one, being dressed, cannot with facility reach the flea, whose armor is proof against crush from the outside, the only way to do is to retire to one's chamber, and there, with the basin of water at hand, make a search in every garment, ready at a moment's notice to pounce with moistened thumb and forefinger upon the aggressor. He is sly and seeks dark corners and crevices, but a little experience soon makes one expert in capturing him. To become accomplished in this is not to be despised, for a single hungry flea may mar one's pleasure in the finest picture-gallery, distract the attention in an important conversation, or increase the labor of a task where one requires full possession of his mental faculties.

Alkaline, naphthol, or corrosive-sublimate solutions, used as lotions, speedily relieve the itching from flea-bites.

There are numerous other troublesome insects in the United States,-midgets, also called sand-flies; ants, bees, wasps, caterpillars, spiders, and even centipedes and scorpions. The two last mentioned are, however, very circumscribed in their range. The bites of insects we often cannot avoid, nor the inflammation produced by the contact with the hair of the caterpillar, but we can easily relieve the pain and itching involved by the use of ammonia-water, or solutions of permanganate of potassium, corrosive sublimate, or naphthol, or by borax lotions and ointments.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE COSMETIC CARE AND TREATMENT OF THE TEETH.

HAT the teeth are most useful and beautiful adjuncts of the

THA

body is self-evident. That they should be so beautiful, while subserving so utilitarian a purpose as theirs, is one of the insoluble mysteries. A young and pretty girl, inspired by affection for the love-lorn swain, beams upon him with her eyes, and he reciprocates the token with his, both adding a full view of the mills of their respective alimentary apparatus. This takes place without a thought, on the part of either, that the expression which reciprocally gladdens their hearts and irradiates their countenances has any other end and aspect than a manifestation of beauty. It is true that the whole outward appearance of the human body is seen, upon reflection, to represent usefulness underlying beauty, and, indeed, beauty conditioned upon usefulness, but no portion so flagrantly as this proclaims its subservience to the lowliest duties, while lending itself to one of the greatest charms of person.

We thank kind fortune that the modern novel is through with the chariot of Phoebus and other Olympian machinery, and simultaneously, for earth, has consigned the pearly teeth, with which heroines were always endowed, to the rubbish of oblivion. Pearly teeth have always been repellant to the eye of the connoisseur of female beauty, as indicative of fragile constitution. The two extremes of unsightliness in teeth, not decayed or crooked, are in those with the translucency of pearl or the cream-color of ivory. Between these two extremes lies beauty of color in teeth. As to their form, elongated teeth are not handsome, nor are those which are distinctively short. They both, particularly the first, indicate constitution which is not

robust. To be handsome, teeth must be fine in both form and color. With these two attributes combined in the highest degree, with immaculate purity, there is no attribute that can so much enhance the beauty of a handsome face, or better redeem the plainness of the ugliest.

The first, milk, temporary, or deciduous teeth, for they are known by all these names, are twenty in number, ten in each jaw. The permanent teeth, so-called (would that one could say so literally), are thirty-two in number, sixteen in each jaw.

Teeth are formed of enamel and dentine. There is a very thin layer of what is called cementum, around the fang, or root, of the tooth, but this is so inconsiderable that we may omit it from our present inquiry. The enamel is harder than the dentine, and lies on the crown of the tooth in nodules thinning to a layer ending in a mere film at the neck of the tooth, the place where it enters the gum. The dentine, the softer bone, called also the ivory of the tooth, surrounds the pulp-cavity, in which lies the pulp, the generatrix and preserver of the tooth in every part. Both of these kinds of bone, the enamel and the dentine, are harder than any other bones of the body, because they contain a greater percentage of bone-earth and less bonecartilage than the bones of the body do. The varying propor tions of bone-cartilage to bone-earth in all the bones of the body, including the teeth, recognize the varying needs of different structures. Hardness and toughness in these substances respectively, the hardness in the bone-earth, the toughness in the bone-cartilage,-when combined in different proportions, fulfill all the varying requirements for the solid portions of the body.

The enamel contains only about 3 per cent. of bone-cartilage, the rest of it being bone-earth. The dentine, on the contrary, contains 28 per cent. of bone-cartilage and 72 per cent. of bone-earth. Compare these proportions with those of

ordinary bone. The ordinary bone of the human body, varying in composition in different parts of the body, with sex, age, health, and strength, contains, upon the average, about one-third of bone-cartilage and two-thirds of bone-earth. The bone of the teeth varies, too, with these conditions, especially with age. is seen, however, that, speaking in general terms, the larger the proportion of bone-earth in bone, the harder the bone is, and that, on account of its largest proportion of that substance, enamel must stand first in hardness, followed by dentine. In fact, the enamel is the hardest of all organic tissues.

No matter what the kind of bone, it requires for its healthy formation nutritious and varying food. The same deficiency in these elements that, with foul air and generally unhygienic surroundings, leads to children having the cartilaginous limbs of rickets, leads also to their having stunted and defective teeth. Teeth never become otherwise than as they were nourished and grew. We have seen little children habitually set down to table to a meagre breakfast of cake and pie and preserves, with not an egg, and rarely a scrap of meat at any time; and this too where poverty did not compel, but where there was nothing standing in the way of their well-being but the densest ignorance on the part of their parents. Yet these children were expected to thrive on such pabulum. They had not the wherewithal to sustain a healthy vitality in any organ, and every detail of their bodies was impoverished and weazen. Of all miserable ways of saving, to starve the stomach is the worst. No better legacy can any father leave a child than a healthy stomach. With it the child, grown to manhood or womanhood, can front the world and dire adversity; but, without it, quails before the world as a creature of nerves to whom existence is inexorable. The ten thousand devils of dyspepsia wait on the days and nights of the richest who in early life have been denied what nature craves as the first conditions of continued vigorous life,-food plentiful and various.