Take the healthiest acorn that has ever fallen from the soundest and most gigantic oak, and plant it in poor and uncongenial soil, or in any locality shut out from the atmosphere or the sun, and it must die, or at best present sent us with but a sickly sapling which can never attain the strength or the dimensions of its progenitors; at least, not until it is transplanted into the sunlight, and brought under the benign influence of the nutriment proper to its healthy development and growth. Light and heat, fresh air and pure water, are indispensable to its existence from the moment of its first appearance above the soil; for without these it must perish. Here, however, its requirements seem to cease; for, under the influence, presuming the soil to be suitable, its mission may be accomplished to the fullest extent. And so it is, measurably, with the animal kingdom also. All these elements are part and parcel of its existence, so to speak; for failing the proper and unrestricted enjoyment of any one of them, it must suffer generally, and in many cases to a fatal extent. As regards man, however, his true physical development requires more care and caution than that of any of the lower animals. Nature, and the instincts of the latter, are sufficient to meet all the necessities of their case; but man being endowed with the higher attribute of reason for his guidance to mental as well as physical perfection, he is called upon to use that attribute in relation to building up his physical structure on a broad and sure foundation, and in so doing establishing a true and healthy basis for his metaphysical structure also. The brain sympathizes with the whole system, and is, consequently, affected by the imperfections or the disarrangements of any of the other organs. A vigorous mind is incompatible with a diseased brain; and as a sound and healthy brain cannot possibly be associated with a physical system suffering from the feebleness and the countless ills that result from a neglect of those means which are found to be indispensable to the creation as well as the preservation of health and strength in the animal, we all can, at a single glance, perceive where we stand, and what our duty is in the premises. The case lies in a nutshell: are the men and women in whom the rising generation shall culminate to be splendid types of strength and physical beauty--to be possessed of that noble manliness of form that characterizes some of the ancient sculptures on the one hand, and the beautifully moulded and exquisitely developed bust and limbs which individualize the Venus of Titian on the other? I ask again, shall they present those exalted features, individually, or shall they, like so many of the men and women of the present time, go shuffling along the streets hollow-eyed, narrow-shouldered skeletons, with complexions that would do no discredit to a charnel house, and bearing, even while yet young, all the impress of declining years?