As the millstones are spoiled and rendered useless by allowing improper things to be mixed with the grain, as pebbles, &c. so the teeth are injured by the quality as well as by the quantity of our food. The oils, acids, tobacco, and other deleterious substances, for ever mixing with continental meals, must greatly injure the organs of mastication as well as of digestion. The human frame is a congeries of organs, all in harmony, when in health, and each assisting the others. But when we deviate from simplicity and temperance, these same organs quarrel with each other, to the detriment, and sometimes to the destruction of the whole constitution. The stomach is one of those patient and willing organs that will work wonders for years and years; but at length it will rebel—and even retaliate. The teeth, which have long sent down immoderate quantities of food, too often of the most abominable composition, for the stomach to grind over again, become visited with pains and penalties by the offended organ, under the vain hope that less work will be done in the upper mill. The warning is unheeded; and then the stomach begins the process of demolition in good earnest. It is in this state of, what the geologists would call “transition,” that we see the teeth of the Germans—and, it must be confessed, of the English sometimes also—in a state disagreeable to the eye, offensive to the nose, and injurious to the health. The stomach, which has inflicted this punishment on the mouth, so far from being benefitted thereby, is still farther injured by the failure of mastication; and then the various organs and functions of the body become involved in the consequences of long-continued deviations from the paths of Nature, simplicity, and temperance! If this penalty be still considered as imaginary, I shall adduce more cogent arguments. The bills of mortality contain very stubborn facts. Let us take the two capitals of Germany and England—Vienna and London. In the _former_, one twenty-fourth of the population goes to the grave annually:—in the latter (London) one-fortieth part only. In the language of the insurance-offices, “the value of life is more than one-third greater in London than in Vienna.” Now this difference will surely not be attributed to climate merely—since the continentals themselves anathematize the climate of England, and the fogs of London, as most “horrid.” Here then we have some clue to the comparative number of teeth in individuals of the same age, at home and abroad. We shall probably find the proportion of 24 to 40 (the ratio of mortality) as exhibiting a fair estimate of the number of teeth in equal masses of the population in Germany and England. Thus, for example, if the Englishman, at the age of 50, have twenty teeth in his head, the German, at the same period of life, will have only twelve, and so on.