e--is one of the best preservatives of sight
which the world affords.

Connected alike with physical and intellectual education, is the
practice of measuring by the eye heights, distances, superfices,
weights, and solids. It is not difficult to train the eye to an accuracy
in this matter which would astonish the uninstructed.

SEC. 3. _Tasting and Smelling._

I do not know that it is worth our while to take pains, by any direct
methods, to cultivate the organs of taste or smell; but I think it
proper, at the least, to preserve their original rectitude.

Many, I know, undertake to say, that were it not for our errors in
regard to food and drink, and were it not, in particular, for the
multitude of strange mixtures which tend to benumb those two senses, we
might determine the qualities of food and drink--whether they are
favorable or adverse--by means of taste and smell, like the animals. But
I do not believe this. The Creator has substituted reason, in us, for
instinct in the brute animals. It is not necessary that we should
possess the latter, when the former is so manifestly superior to it; and
accordingly I do not believe that it is given us, or any of that
acuteness of sensation which exists in the dog, the tiger, the vulture,
&c.--and which so closely resembles it.

There can be no doubt--no reasonable doubt, certainly--that the wretched
customs of modern cookery benumb the senses of taste and smell, more or
less, and that high-seasoned food, condiments, and stimulating drinks do
the same; and should for this reason, were it for no other, be
studiously avoided.

Closely connected with the organ of taste are the TEETH. A volume might
profitably be written on these--as on the eye. But I will only say that
they should be kept perfectly clean, either by rinsing or brushing, or
both, especially after eating; that they should be permitted to chew all
our food, instead of merely standing by as silent spectators to the
passage of that which is mashed, soaked, chopped, &c.; that they should
not be picked or cleaned with pins, or other equally hard instruments;
that they should not be used to crack nuts or other hard, indigestible
substances; and that the stomach, with which they are apt to sympathize
very strongly, should also be kept in a good and healthy condition.

SEC. 4. _Feeling._

Corpulence and slovenliness are generally among the more prolific
sources of a want of acuteness in feeling. The first is a di