o decide
how large a proportion of oxygen is essential to the support of life,
and how rapidly the process of breathing converts this important element
into a deadly poison. It has not, like Leibig, been able to demonstrate
that God has set the animal and vegetable world, the one over against
the other; so that the carbonic acid produced by the breathing of the
one, furnishes the aliment of the other; which, in turn, gives out its
oxygen for the support of animal life; and that, in this wonderful
manner, God has provided that the atmosphere shall, through all ages, be
as pure as when it first came from His creating hand. But shame upon us!
that with all our intelligence, the most of us live as though pure air
was of little or no importance; while the bee ventilates with a
scientific precision and thoroughness, that puts to the blush our
criminal neglect.

To this it may be replied that ventilation in our case, cannot be had,
without considerable expense. Can it be had for nothing, by the
industrious bees? Those busy insects, which are so indefatigably plying
their wings, are not engaged in idle amusement; nor might they, as some
would-be utilitarian may imagine, be better employed in gathering honey,
or in superintending some other department in the economy of the hive.
They are at great expense of time and labor, supplying the rest of the
colony with pure air, so conducive in every way, to their health and
prosperity.

I trust that I shall be permitted to digress, for a short time, from
bees to men, and that the remarks which I shall offer on the subject of
ventilation in human dwellings, may make a deeper impression, in
connection with the wise arrangements of the bee, than they would, if
presented in the shape of a mere scientific discussion; and that some
who have been in the habit of considering all air, except in the
particular of temperature, as about alike, may be thoroughly convinced
of their mistake.

Recent statistics prove that consumption and its kindred diseases are
most fearfully on the increase, in the Northern, and more especially in
the New England States; and that the general mortality of Massachusetts
exceeds that of almost every other state in the Union. In these States,
the tendency of increasing attention to manufacturing and mechanical
pursuits, is to compel a larger and larger proportion of the population
to lead an in-door life, and to breathe an atmosphere more or less
vitiated, and thus u