To what extent food affects the germ plasm we remain somewhat in ignorance. We know that it is from it that the body is nourished, and from it also the stored up or surplus matter in our systems is obtained. The larger the surplus the more highly will the offspring be endowed with energy is a fact clearly set forth by Mr. Spencer. A surplus of fatty food stored up in the body, however, cannot be of much service and may prove injurious. A deficiency of nitrogenous food would also, it seems to me, be an evil. The germ plasm, or its most important part, is a highly nitrogenous substance, like all protoplasm, or living matter. The highest form of germ plasm, that with a most complex molecular structure, would hardly be formed if there was a deficiency of nitrogenous matter in the blood. Air is also food the same as bread is. The activities, the chemical changes in the body, are mainly, though not entirely, between the oxygen of the air and the carbon and hydrogen of our food. The body is quite as much injured by a deficiency of air inhaled into the lungs by exercise as by a deficiency of food, though the injury may be of a different nature. Physicians and others have long ago observed that the offspring of parents living much in the open air and sunlight are healthier and stronger than those of parents living in confined spaces, where air and light are deficient. Air which is impure, which is loaded with poisonous matter, if inhaled for a long time by the mother, lowers the standard of her health. In malarious regions, the vigor of the offspring is less, and the number who die in infancy greater, than in regions where the air and water are pure. Many years ago I remember reading in one of the journals devoted to sanitary science published in London, an account of a rural town where both air and water were of extraordinary purity, and in this town a very large percentage of the children born lived to grow to maturity. There is also an isolated region in France, bordering on the sea, where both air, water and climate are unusually salubrious, and though intermarriage has been practiced for a long time among the several thousand inhabitants, the people are remarkably well formed and healthy. Similar facts have been observed in other places. They indicate to us that a healthful climate, with good air and water, are important factors in all true stirpiculture.