merits of their own case; and that is, the cravings of appetite, and the slavery of habit, induced by the long indulgence of appetite. Freedom can here only be obtained by putting in opposition to their own perverted feelings, the concurrent opinion of the wise and the learned, and the experience of that portion of mankind whose health, bodily vigour, and tranquillity of mind, are proof of the soundness of the dietetic maxims by which they are regulated.

THE CONTRAST.

Messrs. Editors,-I have recently had an opportunity of contrasting the appearance of an aged and a young man of sedentary habits, whose history may serve as a warning to some of your readers. The one is 75 years of age; yet from his erect - form, firm movements, and cheerful and healthy countenance, he seems not to have reached the age of sixty-three. He is of about middle height, strong and muscular, having none of that pallid and emaciated appearance, which is so common among literary men of the present generation; although the fact that he has been a laborious instructor of youth for about half a century, would naturally have led us to other expectations. There is no appearance of decay in any of the mental faculties; on the contrary, he composed, in my presence, at the request of a friend, an original article on a given subject, that exhibited all the vigour and activity of youthful intellect, and would have done honour to the ablest periodicals of our country. His religion too, wears none of that sombre hue, which, in an instructor, is so peculiarly uninviting, and which often counteracts the natural tendency of the most important precepts, even when delivered with all the solemnity which their importance demands.

The other person seems, in some respects, to belong to a different race of beings. Pale, feeble, emaciated, and sickly, with slender and enervated muscles, and with an anxious countenance: at only 35 years of age, he seems scarcely younger than the former; and affords a striking specimen of the evils of premature mental development, in dooming a towering mind to perpetual imprisonment in a feeble body, and subjecting both to consequent premature decay and dissolution.

Whence this surprising difference? It is claimed that physical peculiarities may be inherited, even from a generation quite remote from us. In the present case, however, there is no evidence of any such transmission; but we have prima facie evidence that causes exist fully adequate to the production of pre

sent appearances. In such a case, it is unphilosophical to refer to others more remote and obscure.

The education and habits of the two persons have made the difference. One of them was born in an age when it was not so fashionable as now, to sacrifice health of body for the sake of intellectual attainments;--when, if less Greek and Latin were acquired, less vigour of body was lost during the process;—when, too, it was not deemed indispensable to push the pupil through his course of study, at the earliest period possible; as if the salvation of a country or of the universe depended on his appearance upon the world's great theatre by the moment he was 18 years of age. Until he was 20 years old, he was engaged in agricultural and other manual labours, receiving no other instruction than what was afforded to the mass of the community at that time. At the age of 20 or 21, he commenced a course of study, and subsequently to this became a useful minister and instructor. But through the whole period of his long life, whether employed in instructing himself or others, he has never failed to use much physical exercise in the open air, daily; both from choice, and a conviction of its utility.

The other person, though born within the same boundaries of country, had the misfortune to be subject to a train of influences less happy. Particular circumstances, together with certain accidental occurrences, restrained him from taking part in the sports and other pursuits of those of his own age, and his mind was easily directed to books as sources of amusement. His rapid advances in his studies became a theme of conversation among his friends and acquaintance, and no pains were spared to aid him in his progress. The desire of pleasing his friends, emulation, and perhaps the love of learning for its own sake, all combined to fix his attention, and occupy his time, chiefly in mental efforts. By the time he was eighteen, he had completed his academical studies, and acquitted himself with honour. When engaged as an instructor, and in other, avocations demanding much mental exertion, the habits of study he had acquired led to the neglect of physical exercise, till, involved in the horrors of dyspepsy, he discovered, almost too late, his error; and has long been doomed to a state of physical debility which will not only in a measure disappoint the hopes of his friends, but materially diminish his own usefulness and happiness.

By a more rational education, the elder individual to whom I have alluded, escaped those deteriorating influences to which the other was subjected; and though his mental faculties might have been longer in unfolding, yet the process was vastly more in harmony with the development of his physical frame, and moral powers. In the enjoyment of full health, by alternating labor with sedentary employments, he has been able to sustain

such a degree of mental exertion as would have destroyed a modern student;-and to continue his labours to threescore and len! The younger, on the contrary, a sufferer perpetually from premature mental effort, undertaken without regard to suitable relaxation, and daily physical exercise, is sustained amid a burden of care and fatigue by that resolution and determination, I had almost said desperation, which rational philanthropy and Christian benevolence, quickened by a sense of his own woes, and a knowledge of their cause, can alone produce. A course, however, which must, in all probability, cut short, even of the narrow limits of threescore and ten, a life devoted without reserve to the best interests of mankind.

Too long has it been the predominating purpose of parents and instructors to elicit mind merely to expand or at least to fill the intellectual domain; come of physical and moral wellbeing what might. A prodigy in intellect has been hailed as Heaven's special favourite, and either directly or indirectly held up as a worthy object of universal admiration and imitation; forgetting what injury is done to the moral character, or to the health. For my own part, if I rejoice at all at precocious mental development, it is with much trembling, lest it should bring in its train the ruin of the body and the contamination of the soul. Let mind be developed, but no faster at any given time, than is consistent with the cultivation of moral character, and firm, vigorous, and increasing health. The moment we overstep these natural limits, not the mind only--not the particular faculty which is overstrained, alone,—but the whole system suffers. "Whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, whether one member rejoice, all the members rejoice with it," is alike the language of experience and of revelation.

RIPENING OR MATURATION OF FRUITS.

THE French Royal Academy having received recently several communications relative to the process of ripening or maturation of various fruits, ordered a report to be drawn up on the subject, by a committee of the academy, the result of whose labours may be thus summed up. That during the conversion of green into ripe fruit, the process is, in every case, accompanied by the formation of carbonic acid, and the process is nearly as follows. The liquid sap of the fruit is, in the first instance, converted into a gelatinous fluid, which successively forms beneath the rind, and thus produces the volume of the fruit. When this vegetable jelly is formed in great abundance, it is not unusual for it to cause the skin of the fruit to burst, and to discharge itself in the form of gum on the surface, as in the plum and other fruits. In the

course of its circulation the sap obtains an additional portion of oxygen, by which it is converted into citric, malic, and other vegetable acids, according to the specific quality of the fruit.

As the fruit increases in bulk, the rind becomes gradually thinner, when the absorption of heat and light alters the chemical character of the pulp, and produces the saccharine qualities and flavour of the particular fruit, accompanied by the well known change of colour termed bloom, or ruddy blush colour. That the direct rays of the sun are the immediate agent in this process is fully proved by the fact, that if the fruit or any part of it be shaded by a leaf, or is otherwise screened from the sun, it never acquires, either wholly or in part, that ruddy aspect, nor the same flavour, as fruit that has been freely exposed to the solar

rays.

The committee of the Academy, by whom the report is drawn up, found, by a set of well conducted experiments, that the pulp of vegetables, as of apples for example, on being digested for a short period in dilute vegetable acid, at a given temperature, produced a saccharine juice, analagous to the juice of grapes. That the gum, or gelatine of peas, and other similar plants, subjected to the action of oxatic acid, also produced saccharine matter. The starch or fecula of plants in like manner, on being mixed with the acid of grapes, become converted into saccharine matter, by first passing into a substance like gum arabic, and subsequently into a saccharine fluid. This conversion of vegetable mucilage and jelly into sugar, by the agency of vegetable life, has long been observed, though the process is too refined to allow of its being exactly traced in the chemical laboratory of nature. The ripening of fruit may, therefore, be compared to a spontaneous fermentation of vegetable substances by natural heat, as in the process of malting by germination and artificial heat. It is only after fruit has become fully ripe that it is fit for food-its firm, almost indigestible substance being in the process of maturation, reduced to a soft pulp, and its juices converted into a highly nutritious fluid, in which water, sugar, and vegetable jelly predominate. The wholesomeness of any fruit is always, therefore, in proportion to its pulpiness, and to its saccharine and mucilaginous qualities. It is this which renders the peach, grape, strawberry, and different varieties of the pear, so much superior for eating to most other fruits.

EPIDEMIC DISEASES.

MEN have ever taken a lively interest in the histories of diseases, as subjects of direct personal application to themselves. No matter what may be the malady, they cannot be so far blinded

by the pride of station or of wealth as not to feel instinctively that they may one day be its victims. But how much greater must be the curiosity-how intense the interest excited, when we hear of diseases devastating a whole country and even extensive regions of the earth, as in the case of the plague, the influenza, and the cholera. Eagerly do we inquire into the origin, the mode of extension, and still more into the means of prevention and cure of such formidable maladies. The solution of these points is by no means easy-nay, let us at once admit, in a suitable spirit of frankness, that it is incomplete. But it is not the less important that the material facts in the case, the truth, as far as it is known, should be generally promulgated; since it has been found, by lamentable experience, that the terror resulting from ignorance and prejudice, has often caused more deaths than would have followed the visitation of the epidemic disease, abandoned to its own course.

To correct misconceptions, allay present fears, and prevent future alarms, we shall, from time to time, lay before our readers sketches of the history of EPIDEMICS.

Astrology, chemistry, and natural philosophy, have each in turn been employed to account for the origin of epidemic diseases. Contagion has played a part, to the extent of referring all to it; and in this, as in many other questions, after having gone the round of speculation and forced analogy, we are compelled to resume our course from the very point indicated by the Father of Physic, twenty-two centuries ago, and take his writings on epidemics, on air, water, and situation, and the 3d section of his aphorisms as our chief guides.

*

It is but fit, in advance, to apprize the reader of the distinction between epidemic and endemic diseases. The first attack a great number of persons at the same time, may extend over a whole country or continent, depend on some general and common, but temporary or accidental cause, and last only for a limited period. The second have their origin in a fixed and stated cause, peculiar to the country, and remain without change or variation for many years. The former are more particularly dependent on the state of the atmosphere, viewed as a grand whole; the latter on the nature of the soil and its productions, and the partial emanations altering the purity of the air.

It is, however, very obvious, that, if we admit endemic febrile diseases, we must also allow the superaddition of epidemical influence, whereby the former are aggravated, and the number of persons who are attacked greatly increased. Take intermittent

Hippocrates.