The operation of the same principle is equally conspicuous in girls sent from the country to the workrooms of fashionable milliners and dressmakers in the larger towns. Transferred at once from activity in the open air to confinement all day, and often to a late hour at night, at a sedentary occupation, where there is scarcely even the means of changing their position, and much less of enjoying active muscular exercise, and where, consequently, there is little waste, the digestive powers speedily give way, because less food is now required to repair the diminished loss. If the individual adapts her eating to her change of circumstances, she may escape severe disease; but if, as generally happens, from pure ignorance, she continues to eat to the same extent as before, head-achs, sickness, bilious disorder, and indigestion will be among the smallest of her evils, and she will have reason to be thankful if she does not become the victim of confirmed bad health. In establishments of this description, the provision of the means of exercise even by dumb-bells, shuttlecock, or otherwise, in a large room with open windows for a few minutes several times a-day, would not only prevent much suffering, but even repay itself in an economical point of view, by producing an increased aptitude for work, and less frequent absence on account of illness. In these days of wide-spreading philanthropy, considerations of this kind ought to be more attended to. The necessity of proportioning the supply of food to the expenditure incurred and to the mode of life, is still further illustrated in the case of individuals changing from an agricultural or other employment carried on in the open air in the country, and involving no very great bodily labour, to one of a mechanical kind carried on in an impure atmosphere in a city, and requiring severe and continued muscular exertion. It is a matter of experience, for example, that the stout young men from the country, who are generally selected as apprentices for the laborious occupation of letter-press printing, almost uniformly break down during the first ten or twelve months, and it is only after some years’ training that they are able to withstand the fatigue. The vitiated atmosphere in which they work has some share in producing this result, but the chief cause is undoubtedly the inadequacy of their ordinary diet to repair the great expenditure of muscular energy to which they are habitually subjected, and for which they have not been previously prepared. In the office where this volume is printed, four strong and healthy lads were engaged in the summer of 1835 as pressmen, and put to work along with an equal number of experienced men. Before the following February every one of the former had been laid up from sickness for weeks, although the whole of them are of the most sober and steady habits; while not one of the older and more experienced men felt any inconvenience from his exertions. This very instructive