been thought advisable to write the first and second parts also, with a view to render the whole more intelligible and complete.

In carrying out this alteration, the standard works on physiology (more especially those of Dr. Carpenter) have been freely used; and the Author hopes, if any readers should become acquainted with these works through his quotations, that such knowledge may not end where it will begin.

The last few pages have been written in great haste, and under a press of business, after the earlier portions of the book were printed, and when the Author was on the point of leaving England. By the time these words are in type he will be on his way to the Crimea, hoping to assist in relieving the sufferings of the sick or wounded soldiery; and he trusts that all critics will deal gently with the absent.

PUTNEY;

March, 1855.

PART II.-PHYSICAL EDUCATION.

CHAPTER I.

The Effects of Ill-health upon the Nervous System

CHAPTER II.

The Preservation of Health in Infancy and Childhood

Introduction

PART III.-MORAL EDUCATION.

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

THE STRUCTURE AND OPERATIONS OF THE

NERVOUS SYSTEM.

THE Nervous System, as it exists in the higher
animals, may be described as that part of their frame
which brings them into relation with the external
world; and by which their various members and organs
are united in close and harmonious co-operation. To
its instrumentality they are directly and entirely in-
debted for the powers of Sensation, Motion, and
Thought; while, at the same time, it exerts a control-
ling or guiding influence over all those operations by
which food is applied to the maintenance or growth of
the fabric, and by which effete or noxious matters are
cast off. In the fulfilment of its first-named and most
essential offices, it is the source of those powers
and faculties which create a broad distinction be-
tween the typical members of the animal and of the
vegetable kingdoms: a distinction so familiar, that
there is little need to dwell upon it here. But yet it
may be pointed out that, in the plant, every branch or

portion is but a repetition of others, each perfectly capable, under favourable circumstances, of maintaining an independent existence when severed from the parent stem: of which it forms a part, not in consequence of the share that it contributes to the common weal, but by virtue of structural continuity alone. It is true that each branch augments the size of the tree in which it is bound up: but every one augments it in the same manner, and by the addition of the same materials. Hence, if one or more of these branches be removed, there is no loss to the others, and no constitutional disturbance to the tree: the only effect being the formation of a new and luxuriant growth in some other direction; for the purpose of consuming the sap which had been originally destined for the boughs taken away. In the animal, however, the case is widely different, the various organs being either dissimilar, or combined in pairs; and each of them, or each pair, having its special function, which cannot be performed, save partially and imperfectly, by any of the rest. These organs are connected together, structurally, by the remaining tissues of the body, after a manner analogous to the connection of the parts of a tree; but there is besides, a closer and more intimate union between them, in which the nerves alone are instrumental. From this arises that sympathy of distant organs which causes them to participate in the derangements or diseases of each other, even when in no way dependent upon the function that is arrested; and to suffer, indirectly, from all injurious changes, occurring in any part of the frame. This interdependence, and the three great