I would not lay too much stress on food and drink; for, as I have already observed, more than once, the causes of infantile ill health and mortality are numerous. Still I must insist that, of all the sources of disease, these are the most prolific. Much is done towards ruining the health of children by the improper food and drink of the mother. But when, in addition to all this, the children themselves are early fed with animal food, and with stimulating drinks--punch, coffee, tea, &c.--and an artificial thirst is early excited and rendered habitual, their destruction, for time and eternity, is almost inevitable. Very few children relish any drink but water, or sweetened water, at first; and where they do, it is probably hereditary. I have been struck with their tastes and preferences; nor less with the folly of those around them, in endeavoring to change them, by requiring them--almost always against their will--to sip a little coffee, or a little tea, or a little lemonade; or, it may be, a little toddy. Such children _may_ escape the death of the drunkard or the debauchee; but if they do, it will not be through the instrumentality of the parents. I am very much opposed to giving children hot drinks of any kind. If they are to drink substances which are injurious, as tea or coffee, let them be cool. I do not say _cold_, for that would be going to the other extreme. But no drink, in any ordinary case, should be above the heat of our bodies; that is, about 98 degrees of Fahrenheit's thermometer. Yet the precautions of this paragraph will be almost unnecessary, if children are confined--as they ought to be, and would be, did we not go out of our way to teach them otherwise--to water, as their only drink. Cold water is almost always preferred. Not one child in a thousand would ever prefer it hot, until his taste had been perverted. No writer has inveighed more against hot drinks of every kind, than the late William Cobbett--and, as I think, with more justice. But, in avoiding one rock, we must not, as has already been intimated, make shipwreck on another. Hot drinks, though they injure the powers of the stomach, and by that means and through that medium, are one principal cause of the almost universal early decay of teeth, are yet less injurious, or at least less dangerous, immediately, than cold ones. Mr. Locke, in speaking of the sports of a child, in the open air, has the following quaint, but judicious remarks: