nfit for the full development of vigorous health.
The importance of pure air can hardly be over-estimated; indeed, the
quality of the air we breath, seems to exert an influence much more
powerful, and hardly less direct, than the mere quality of our food.
Those who, by active exercise in the open air, keep their lungs
saturated as it were, with the pure element, can eat almost anything
with impunity; while those who breath the sorry apology for air which is
to be found in so many habitations, although they may live upon the most
nutritious diet, and avoid the least excess, are incessantly troubled
with head-ache, dyspepsia, and various mental as well as physical
sufferings. Well may such persons, as they witness the healthy forms and
happy faces of so many of the hardy sons of toil, exclaim with the old
Latin poet,

"Oh dura messorum illia!"

It is with the human family very much as it is with the vegetable
kingdom. Take a plant or tree, and shut it out from the pure air, and
the invigorating light, and though you may supply it with an abundance
of water and the very soil, which by the strictest chemical analysis, is
found to contain all the elements that are essential to its vigorous
growth, it will still be a puny thing, ready to droop, if exposed to a
summer's sun, or to be prostrated by the first visitation of a winter's
blast. Compare now, this wretched abortion, with an oak or maple which
has grown upon the comparatively sterile mountain pasture, and whose
branches, in Summer are the pleasant resort of the happy songsters,
while, under its mighty shade, the panting herds drink in a refreshing
coolness. In Winter it laughs at the mighty storms, which wildly toss
its giant branches in the air, and which serve only to exercise the
limbs of the sturdy tree, whose roots deep intertwined among its native
rocks, enable it to bid defiance to anything short of a whirlwind or
tornado.

To a population, who, for more than two-thirds of the year, are
compelled to breathe an atmosphere heated by artificial means, the
question how can this air be made, at a moderate expense, to resemble,
as far as possible, the purest ether of the skies is, (or as I should
rather say ought to be,) a question of the utmost interest. When open
fires were used, there was no lack of pure air, whatever else might have
been deficient. A capacious chimney carried up through its insatiable
throat, immense volumes of air, to be replaced by the pu