One word more as to the importance of the skin in the animal economy, and that word a summary of its functions and principal vital attributes. The skin is a "sanitary commissioner," draining the system of its impurities; it is an energetic labourer, in that perpetual interchange of elements which in its essence constitutes life; it is a regulator of the density and fluidity of the blood; it performs the office of a lung in supplying the blood with oxygen, and abstracting its carbon; it changes the crude organic elements of the blood, so as to render them capable of nutrition; it emulates the heart in giving speed to the circulating blood; it is the minister of the brain and spinal marrow in its properties of sensation; and it feeds and nourishes, and keeps in the highest operative condition, that part of the nervous system which is confided to its care. Viewing the skin in this way, and recognising its just claims to consideration as an important animal organ, we are led to the conclusion that the skin is a part of the digestive system, like the liver and kidneys, by virtue of its emunctory and nutritive powers; it is an appendage of the heart and a part of the system of circulation of the blood; it is a surface lung, a breathing organ; and it partakes of man's intellectual nature by its close connexion with, and dependence on, the brain. In the lower animals, the skin combines in itself alone, the feeling, seeing, smelling, hearing, and judging organ. The structure of the skin--with its drainage tubes requiring a free exit; its streams of blood seeking for oxygen from the air; its nerves demanding the contact and stimulus of the atmosphere--obviously points to the relation which should subsist between man and the external world--to the fact that his natural and intended state is one of nakedness. Certain portions of the skin, in different parts of the world and among different nations, are commonly exposed to the air as Nature doubtless intended the whole body to be. Our faces and hands; in women, the neck, and often the shoulders; among the Highlanders, the lower limbs; these portions of the body are naked, are unblushingly exposed; and, as we all know, without inconvenience. Who ever feared to take cold because his hands and his face were open to the free air of Heaven? What lady ever complained of inconvenience resulting from her _décolleté_ shoulders at an evening party or the opera, or even from the bitter draughts of night air that frequently close those entertainments? Who ever heard of a Highlander suffering from rheumatism in the knees? That charming friend and companion of our youthful dreams, Miss Jane Porter, who was always taking colds from the slightest exposure of her skin to the air, once said to her brother, who was a physician,--"How I wish that my skin were all face?" "Try and make it all face," was his reply. And she partially succeeded; but for complete success she wanted the knowledge of the Turkish Bath.