especially should be kept from a too early and close application to
books. By means of healthful and instructive games and sports; by visits
to workshops and factories where familiar objects are made; and by a
cultivation of the sense of the beautiful in nature and art, more can be
done towards securing a sound mind in a sound body than by the easier
and more common method of sending the child to school almost as soon as
it can walk.

IMPORTANCE OF TEACHING CHILDREN HYGIENIC HABITS.

The force of habits should never be lost sight of by those having the
charge of children. They constitute a power of which parents should
early avail themselves. J. J. Rousseau has said, 'The only habit which
one ought to permit the child, is of not contracting any.' But this is
impossible and undesirable. When it is remembered that _a good habit is
just as hard to break as a bad one_, the importance of seeking from the
very cradle to frame good habits is evident. It is easy to create, but
difficult to reform. What then are some of the principal hygienic habits
which it is desirable to teach children?

First we will mention, _a liking for proper food at regular times_. The
indigestion, or weakness of digestion, from which many children suffer,
is in some cases hereditary or the result of feeble health. But most
frequently it is the effect of bad management. The giving to the child
of pastry and cakes at meals instead of simple and nutritious food, the
encouragement of capriciousness of appetite instead of teaching it to
like everything that is healthful, and the neglect to inculcate the
habit of eating at regular hours, these are the principal causes of many
cases of diarrhoea, vomitings, weak appetite, colicky pains, and
indigestion among children.

The daily use of at least a sponge-bath of the entire person is an
excellent habit. Cold water should be employed after the fifth or sixth
year. This simple practice of a cold sponge-bath every morning, if more
generally taught children, would avert many a cold and rheumatic attack
in after life.

The habit of quenching the thirst with only simple drinks, milk and
water, should be early and thoroughly formed. No American mother would
think of giving spirits to her child, excepting under medical advice;
but many permit almost from infancy the use of tea and coffee. These
drinks are not only unnecessary in childhood, but to a certain extent
injurious. They excite the nervous system and d