1909] The Ottawa Naturalist. 135 



popular, wonderfully clear, and thoroughly scientiiic, in its 

 treatment of matters of daily life, regarding which far too much 

 ignorance prevails. A life-like portrait of the immortal Apostle 

 of Health, Louis Pasteur, forms the frontispiece, while the text 

 is illustrated by sixty-six original drawings and half-tones. The 

 pleasing cover, the paper, the clear large type, and the whole 

 get-up of the book reflect the greatest credit on the author and 

 publisher. 



The author's former "Introductory Physiology and Hy- 

 giene" has proved its usefulness as a teacher's manual, and the 

 present work was written at the suggestion of a former active 

 member of the Ottawa Field- Naturalist's Club, Inspector R. H. 

 Cowley, and of Inspector W. I. Chisholm. Professor Knight has 

 long been recognized as a leading educationist and few of our 

 Canadian scientific men have had his lengthy and rare experience 

 in the work of instruction. Hygiene, like Political Economy, is 

 too often regarded as a dismal science, a science of "Don'ts," as 

 testified by health notices in every street and tram-car. To 

 make the subject attractive to young people is a difficult task, 

 but Professor Knight has achieved it with marked success. 

 More readable pages could not be written than those on Sunlight, 

 Bathing, the Eyes, Digestion, Exercise, Disease, and Clothing. 

 Any boy or girl will be the better for reading this bright little 

 manual Much of the sickness, which afflicts our children, is 

 due to ignorance, not only on the part of the sufferersbuton the 

 part of parents. Yet, even the most devoted parents cannot 

 watch their offspring all the time. How valuable then to interest 

 the young in the subject of health, treated so ably in this book! 

 The lessons here taught will become second-nature in the child 

 who will avoid dangers to health as naturally as he will avoid 

 a deep hole in the side-walk. Tennyson's sad lines: 

 "How dwarf'd a growth of cold and night. 

 How blanch'd with darkness must I grow." 

 find effective antidote in Professor Knight's chapter II where 

 the pale face, the stunted growth and the weak frame, charac- 

 teristic of unnatural conditions, especially city overcrowding, 

 are described, and the causes and the remedies clearly enunciated. 



Fresh air, cleanliness, tobacco, alcohol, are all amply treated 

 by the author, with convincing reasonableness. The important 

 chapters, XIII and XIV, treat of the blood and circulation. It 

 is curious that more than a quarter of the blood in the human 

 body is contained in the liver, while through the brain and 

 muscles there circulate five or six parts, by weight, of the total 

 amount, the bones receiving only 2^ per cent, and the skm 

 barely 1 per cent. To the blood is due, as Professor Knight 

 points out, the "pinkish or reddish colour of the skin," and the 

 fine ruddy cheeks of Canadian girls, as compared with their pale 

 cousins in New York or Boston, are partly to be explained 



