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farmers there were formerly not allowed to marry until they could produce a certificate showing that they had planted a certain number of these trees. They are doubly valuable on account of the timber, the wood being noted both for beauty and durability, and also for the nuts, the latter perhaps chiefly on account of the oil pressed from them, which is much employed abroad for culinary and other purposes, half the people in France, it is said, using no other kind, whether for food or for burning in lamps, while for the special purposes of the painter and copper-plate engraver it is of peculiar worth. The shells of the larger kinds of nuts are sometimes brought into use, as they make pretty trinket cases, and in Limerick the delicate kid gloves for which that place is famous are often thus enclosed, in order to give a pleasant surprise to the opener. A far more wonderful deposit was that effected by one Peter Eccles, an Englishman and a clerk in Chancery, who, as recorded in the Harleian Manuscripts, wrote out the whole Bible within so small a compass that, when finished, he enclosed it complete "in a large English walnut, no bigger than a hen's egg; the nut holdeth the book, as was seen by many thousands."

To the durable stain afforded by the green outer husk many a fugitive has been indebted for the very effectual disguise of a changed complexion, while for dyeing the hair it has been employed ever since the days of the Romans. When it is wished to remove the discoloration from the skin, this may be partially effected by the application of moistened salt, but time alone can entirely efface it.

As an article of diet the nuts are considered wholesome so long as the skin can be easily detached; but when as they dry this ceases to be the case they become indigestible, and from their acritude are also injurious to the gums. The home-born ones are esteemed the best, and as our walnut-wood is mostly imported from abroad, the tree is generally grown in England for the sake of the fruit, but as the supply of natives is by no means sufficient for our appetite, it is supplemented by large quantities of foreigners: more than 32,000 bushels were admitted in 1852, chiefly brought from France and Spain. The hickory nuts sometimes seen in London, and which are of Transatlantic growth, are also a species of the walnut tribe, many varieties of which are common in America. They are mostly characterized by possessing a very hard shell and a very small kernel.

(To be continued.)

XL.-PHYSICAL TRAINING.

BY EDWIN CHADWICK, ESQ., C.B.*

MISS NIGHTINGALE, who began her career of devotion ás a missionary in the schools of the poor, states, in a letter to me on the unsanitary condition of schools, "I have unquestionably seen (in my schoolmistress' days) bred, under my eyes and nose, scarlet fever in the higher class (even) of boys' schools. Every one has seen the same process as to measles in all rich and poor schools (National, Union, &c.). But parents, rich and poor, are so blinded by the idea that every body must have measles once in their life, (and 'you had better have it young',) that they do not understand what they see."

It is no mitigation of the evils inflicted in the large proportion of schools, that there are a considerable number of improved schools to which they do not attach. These evils are illustrative of a widely prevalent neglect of the physical training of children. But if the unsanitary conditions of schools were entirely removed, if all schools for children of the laboring and middle classes were made all that is requisite, in warming and ventilation and personal conveniences, -the length of time daily during which the present medieval system subjects growing children to bodily constraint and inaction, and to forced mental labor, is in violation of laws of physiology and psychology, is injurious to body as well as mind, and demands interference to protect the population from deterioration.

If we observe young children in a state of nature, their peculiar mobility during periods of growth, their incessant changes and activity of muscular exertion, changes short at first, and longer as growth advances, excited by quickly varying objects of mental attention, with manifestations of pleasure when allowed free scope, of pain when long restrained;-if we ask to what these changes subserve, we receive for answer from the physiologist, that they serve to excite the whole nervous and muscular system, and to promote healthy bodily assimilation and development. The theory and the common practice of school instruction is six hours' quietude and muscular inactivity, at intervals of three hours each with only occasional variations of position, and during this bodily inactivity, continued attention, and mental labor of very young children, say from six or seven to ten years old and upwards. To ensure the bodily inactivity, and enforce continued mental attention and labor (for periods which are difficult to sustain, and injurious to exceed, for adults) the service of the school teacher is made to be one of severe repression, to keep little children still, whilst every muscle

*We are indebted to the kindness of Mr. Chadwick for this important contribution on a subject which we have frequently pressed upon the attention of our readers. It formed a portion of his Address to the Public Health Department of the National Association, at Glasgow.

is often aching from suppressed activity. I have the warranty of Professor Owen for saying, that the resistances of children are for the most part natural vindications of the laws of physiology; and I am prepared to show elsewhere, on the evidence of some of the most experienced and successful school teachers in the kingdom, that they are violations of the laws of psychology and injurious mentally. The evil effects of the common bodily constraints during long hours in school are seriously manifested on girls, and especially on girls of the higher and middle classes. In Manchester and some of our manufacturing towns, with increasing prosperity, an increasing proportion of the female children of parents originally from the rural districts are sent to boarding schools as well as day-schools, using long hours of sedentary occupation to book instruction. Mr. Robertson, the surgeon, who has had special practice in cases of disease affecting females, shows that the proportion of mothers of that class who have been so trained and educated, who can suckle their own children is decreasing,—which in itself is a source of much social evil, and an injury to the wet nurse's own child, who is displaced for the offspring of the incapable mother. He proves statistically that the deaths from childbirth are more than eight times more numerous amongst females so brought up than amongst females of a lower condition who have had less school restraint and more freedom. Dr. Drummond, a physician of Glasgow, specially conversant with the diseases of females, declares to me that all the evils observed by Mr. Robertson in Manchester, as arising from the neglect of bodily training," are still more grievously prevalent amongst the females of this city.

Females subjected to long hours of sedentary application, either at home or at boarding school, are peculiarly liable to spinal distortion, to hysteria, and to painful disorders, which prevail to an extent known only to physicians-making life burdensome to themselves and wretched to their unhappy offspring, for it is proverbial that "Ailing mothers make moaning children." These bodily weaknesses in the heads of families have a widely depressing influence. Unsanitary conditions which enfeeble the body, and predispose it to disease, make the mind the body's slave: sound sanitary measures tend to enfranchise the mind and make it the body's master. Parallel with this evidence as to the evil effects produced by the violation of the laws of physiology by the prolonged restraint in school and to muscular inaction of young and growing children, I have the evidence of wide experience of trained school teachers under the best systems, that children between seven and ten years of age do not and cannot retain a bright voluntary attention—the only profitable quality of attention on the average longer than two hours in the morning and one hour after dinner. Further, I have extensive and complete evidence, as I conceive, that under conditions where suitable bodily exercise is provided, where there is a better compliance with the physiological law of development ex

tended, better mental accomplishment is communicated in half the common school hours. Thus the old paradox is realized, that the

half is better than the whole.

To some extent the aggravation of children's ailments, by the forced inactivity of ordinary school, is mitigated as respects boys by their greater freedom and opportunities of exercise at play. It is the girls, on whom the most grievous suffering is entailed by the present course of school and other bodily restraints. So grievous had the evils entailed by the cloister system of early training become for middle class females, that for their protection in Sweden a special system of school gymnastics, formed by a celebrated medical professor of the name of Ling, has been long introduced into practice, and is spreading in Prussia, and in other parts of Europe. In England, mothers of the middle and higher classes take their daughters into the towns to receive dancing lessons. In Sweden, mothers of the same class take their daughters into Stockholm to receive gymnastic training. So important are the effects produced, as I learn from Sweden, that they are now adding, as means of bodily, which really includes mental training, swimming schools for girls as well as for boys. The gymnastics are systematised into two divisions-Sickness gymnastics, for retrieving bodily defects and ailments; and Health gymnastics, for bodily development. In some of our best managed district pauper schools in England, and also in the Royal Military Asylum at Chelsea, for the training of the children of soldiers, we have proximate experience of the working of less systematised sanitary exercises, combining the military, and in some cases most advantageously a naval, drill with swimming, and other bodily exercises, together with a reduced amount of sedentary application in school, generally half school time, with very high success both in the correction of the bodily defects abounding in that class, and in strengthening them physically for the future service of the world, as also in strengthening them morally by discipline, and mentally by a brighter voluntary attention during reduced, as well as less wearisome, hours of school instruction. The half school time children of this class, having eighteen hours of book instruction weekly, proved upon examination to be even superior in book attainments to those of the same classes, under the same system of school instruction and under the same teachers, who are kept altogether in school thirty-six hours weekly. I also find it a fact generally acknowledged by school teachers, that in the mixed schools of the lower classes, the book attainments of the girls, who are employed one half of the school time in sewing and in other industrial occupations, are fully equal to those of the boys in the same schools, who are exclusively occupied in book learning. It is common to hear the manly education of English youth, and the healthy exercise they have received in boat racing and cricket, made matter of boast; but what class of youth is it, and what proportion of the population do they form who receive these advan

tages? In the densely covered town districts what space is there for artisans' children to partake of any such exercises? or what time is there after the present school hours to get to any space out of the town to engage in them? These or other games ought to be maintained and provided for, but they do not however dispense with systematised bodily training. Cricket often leaves contracted chests, which a well applied drill or systematised gymnastics expand; round shouders, which the drill makes straight; shambling gait, which the drill makes regular and firm and quick. The youth of Eton and Oxford, I have been assured by the collegiate authorities, are greatly improved in health and strength and in every way, by the common military drill in addition to their ordinary exercises. For the middle and higher classes who could afford it, the cavalry drill or horse exercise would be a valuable sanitary as well as a civil and military improvement. As denoting the connexion between body and mind, it may be mentioned, that as a general rule to which there are fewer exceptions than might be supposed, those who are foremost in the drill and in bodily exercises are found in low schools as well as high to be the foremost in mental exercises. Our higher education which governs the education of the middle and the lower class is assumed to be classical, but in the hands of the ecclesiastics of the middle ages from whom we derived it, it ceased to be so; it is not now so, and our movement ought to be to make it strictly so; for the classics, as may be seen from the dicta of Plato, Aristotle, and Galen, put the bodily training before the mental, and by the Greeks and Romans, during the time of their strength, it was most successfully cultivated. But care and exertion will be required that suitable provision is made for the bodily as well as mental training of females.

XLI.-FRIENDLY SOCIETIES.

(Continued.)

THE security of law and of a sound scientific basis is absolutely necessary for the success of large and permanent Benefit Societies; and numbers and permanence are essential to enable such Societies to accomplish the full amount of benefit which they are capable of yielding. But while every Benefit Society should aim at becoming both large and permanent, and endeavor to avail itself of the security afforded by statute, and by the mathematical calculation of chances which has been applied to life assurance, there is nothing to hinder them, under good management, from starting on the old friendly terms. The clergyman of a district crowded with working men and women, among whom he sees much reckless and useless expenditure in time of health and prosperity, and the direst of want and ruin in sickness or adverse fortune, may rapidly possess himself

VOL. VI.

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