doors and windows are shut, and is then perhaps most potent in contaminating the meat, the milk, and the drinking water, and in poisoning the inmates. 4. The more perfect the public sewers of a town, the greater the danger to every house connected with such sewers, if the internal drain pipes of the house be unsound, and not disconnected. In houses so misconnected, sewer air is "laid on " as certainly for the detriment of health as coal gas for illumination; and you can turn off coal gas at the meter. 5. Scamped drain-work is one of the most dangerous of the sanitary flaws of new buildings: it is also one of the most common, and one of the most difficult to detect, and is rarely found out except by the illness it produces. 6. If you are about to buy or to rent a house, be it new or be it old, take care before you complete your bargain to ascertain the soundness of its sanitary arrangements with no less care and anxiety than you would exercise in testing the soundness of a horse before you purchase it. 7. If you are building a house, or if you can achieve it in an old one, let no drain be under any part of your house, disconnect all waste pipes and overflow pipes from the drains, and place the soil pipe outside the house, and ventilate it. 8. If there is a smell of drains in your house, or a damp place in a wall near which a waste pipe or a soil pipe runs, or a damp place in the cellar or kitchen floor near a drain or a tank, let no time be lost in laying bare the pipes or drains until the cause be detected. 9. If a rat appears through the floor of your kitchen or cellar, and a strong current of air blows from the rathole when chimneys are acting and the windows and doors of the house are shut, feel sure that something is wrong with a drain. 10. If you are tenants, and your landlord refuses to remedy the evil, do it at your own cost rather than allow your family to be ill. 11. Many a man who would be aghast at the idea of putting small quantities of arsenic into every sack of flour, and so by degrees killing himself and family, does not hesitate to allow sewer gas to poison the inmates of his house, even in the face of the strongest remonstrances of his medical adviser. 12. A landlord may reasonably look for interest on money which he spends for the benefit of his tenant; but he is committing little short of manslaughter if, by refusing to rectify sanitary defects in his property, he saves his own pocket at the expense of the health and lives of his tenants.-Extracted from 66 Dangers to Health," by T. P. Teale. Calcutta. The capital of British India, situate on an arm of the Ganges river. It is in the Province of Bengal. Nabob. The title of an Indian Prince. Mogul. The title of the Emperor of Hindostan, who was called the Great Mogul. Bengal. Includes the north west provinces of India and the Punjaub, and is ruled by Lieutenant-Governors. Cork. A city in the province of Munster in Ireland. It is a seaport, and much farm produce, such as butter, eggs, and bacon, is sent into England and abroad from thence. CLEANLINESS NEXT TO GODLINESS. offensive, unpleasant. consciousness, the inward sense scales, the little shiny bits on a fish's skin are scales. arteries, large blood-vessels which bring the blood from the heart to all parts of the body. dissolve, to melt, to liquify. offensive, unpleasant. over. chilling, making cool. WATER is not only necessary as a beverage to the human body, but it is a great agent in promoting cleanliness both in the home and the person. No dirty person can ever really be healthy. The dirty classes of our great towns are invariably "the dangerous classes." Unclean people are uncivilized, and sanitary inquirers have made out that the dirty classes are the drunken classes, and that they are prone to seek in the stupefaction of beer, gin, and opium, a refuge from the miserable depression caused by the foul conditions in which they live. A great writer says "What worship is there not in mere washing! Perhaps one of the most moral things a man in common cases has it in his power to do. Strip thyself, go into the bath, or were it into the limpid pool of a running brook, and then wash and be clean; thou wilt step out again a purer and a better man. This consciousness of perfect outer pureness-that to thy skin there now adheres no foreign speck of imperfection-how it radiates on thee; with aiming symbolic influences to thy very * soul, thou hast an increased tendency to all good things whatever. The oldest Eastern sages with joy and holy gratitude had felt it to be so, and that it was the Maker's gift and will." THE SKIN. Every part of the body is covered up by the skin; or we might say the covering skins, for there are two skins, one over the other. The outer skin (called the scarf skin) is a protection to the true skin. It consists of a very great number of the smallest scales, and these scales are continually coming off and fresh ones growing from underneath. There is no feeling at all in the outer skin; but there is so much in the true skin, that if it were not protected by those little scales that form the outer skin, every time we were touched we should feel pain. A blister shows these two skins: you then see the outer skin separated from the other and raised up. Prick the raised skin and nothing is felt; but the slightest touch on the under skin will cause great pain; for this under skin is made up of numberless fibres and of the net-work of veins and arteries; and close beside every one of these vessels are the ends of the nerves, forming also a net-work. The spaces between the net-work are filled with innumerable little bags. These minute bags-which are called glands-have openings which should not be choked up by the outer skin. If the scales of the outer skin close the holes of the glands, it is very bad; for they hold a moisture called perspiration, which comes out of the blood, and which ought to escape from these openings and fly off into the air. If this moisture cannot get away, it gets back into the blood and injures the health; and if all those glands were completely closed death would ensue. The scales of the outer skin do not come off very easily: they need to be rubbed off, and if this is neglected, the cast-off article, dried perspiration, and dust form a crust over the body. Rubbings-with coarse towels, soft water, and common soap, are needed to prevent the formation or to dissolve this crust, and should be frequently used. The moisture can then pass freely through the ends of the glands. In winter and summer about two pints of perspiration pass from the body daily, and this contains the impurities of the blood which ought to be got rid off. Continued perspiration causes thirst, because the blood loses the water it contains and gets thick, and requires to be supplied with more to make it thinner. Thus the whole circulating system of the body keeps the inside organs clean, as it were, and they get rinsed out by means of water, taken into the blood, and given back through the perspiration glands, which should always be kept free from obstruction or dirt. If the little openings which come to the surface of the skin were blocked up completely for a short space of time it would be fatal. Once, in a grand religious festival in Italy, a poor woman consented to allow her little boy to take the part of * St. John, and to be carried through the town on a triumphal car with his body all gilded over from head to foot |