Dr. Clarke says,--"Since the free expansion of the chest, or, in other words, the unimpeded action of the respiratory organs, is essential to health, the employment of tight stays and those forms of dress which interfere with these natural actions must be injurious, and cannot therefore be too strongly censured." The celebrated Dr. James Johnson declares,--"The growth of the whole body and the freedom of all its functions so much depend upon perfect digestion, that every impediment to that digestion, such as compression of the middle of the body, must inevitably derange the whole constitution. Although the evils of tight lacing are as patent as the sun at noonday, I have never known its commission to be acknowledged by any fair dame. It is considered essential to a fine figure, yet I never could discover any marks of stays in the statues of the Medicean Venus, or the Apollo. And I venture to aver that the Cyprian goddess was not in the habit of drawing her zone as tight as the modern fair ones, else the sculptor would have recorded the cincture in marble. The comfort and motions of the foot are not more abridged and cramped by the Chinese shoe than are respiration and digestion by the stay." Thus wrote the physician to the father of the present queen of England. A former professor of the theory and practice of medicine in the university of Vermont says,--"Undue confinement of the chest must at all periods of life be prejudicial; hence the practice of tight lacing we almost always find classed among the causes of phthisis, as well as of numerous other ills." And he adds,--"It is surely an erroneous notion that women need the support of stays." BEST MATERIAL FOR DRESS. In all seasons of the year, and in all climates, the best material for dress, for old and young, for strong and weak, is woollen. It is the poorest conductor of heat, and therefore secures the most equable temperature. This is the principal object of dress. The superiority of woollen clothing for babes is even greater in July than in January. In the warmest days a single thickness of soft flannel will suffice. But if linen or cotton be worn, the garment is soon moistened by perspiration, and two or three additional thicknesses are needed to protect the child against the ill-effects of a draught. In warm weather we find it necessary to wear woollen garments in the gymnasium, as a protection against a chill from draughts while perspiring. Our soldiers in the South find flannel their best friend, securing them against the extremes and exposures of their camp and field life. Blacksmiths, glass-blowers, furnace-men, and others exposed to the highest temperatures, find woollen indispensable.