Nature has guarded the health of her creatures by a marvelous system of protective intuitions. The sensitive membrane of the eye resents the intrusion of every foreign substance. An intuitive sense of discomfort announces every injurious extreme of temperature. To the unperverted taste of animals in a state of nature wholesome food is pleasant, injurious substances repulsive or insipid. Captain Kane found that only the rage of famine will tempt the foxes of the Arctic coastlands to touch spoiled meat. In times of scarcity the baboons of the Abyssinian mountains greedily hunt for edible roots, which an unerring faculty enables them to distinguish from the poisonous varieties. The naturalist Tschudi mentions a troop of half-tamed chamois forcing their way through a shingle roof, rather than pass a night in the stifling atmosphere of a goat stable. Man in his primitive state had his full share of those protective instincts, which still manifest themselves in children and Nature-guided savages. It is a mistake to suppose that the lowest of those savages are naturally fond of ardent spirits. The travelers Park, Gerstaecker, Vambery, Kohl, De Tocqueville, and Brehm agree that the first step on the road to ruin is always taken in deference to the example of the admired superior race, if not in compliance with direct persuasion. The negroes of the Senegal highlands shuddered at the first taste of alcohol, but from a wish to conciliate the good will of their visitors hesitated to decline their invitations, which subsequently, indeed, became rather superfluous. The children of the wilderness unhesitatingly prefer the hardships of a winter camp to the atmospheric poisons of our tenement houses. Shamyl Ben Haddin, the Circassian war chief, whose iron constitution had endured the vicissitudes of thirty-four campaigns, pathetically protested against the pest air of his Russian prison cell, and warned his jailers that, unless his dormitory was changed, Heaven would hold them responsible for the guilt of his suicide. I have known country boys to step out into a shower of rain and sleet to escape from the contaminated atmosphere of a city workshop, and after a week’s work in a spinning mill return to the penury of their mountain homes, rather than purchase dainties at the expense of their lungs.