150 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 







appendage, and Nature seems to have taken especial care to protect 

 the nape of the neck in a great number of different animals. It is 

 certainly a suggestive circumstance that fomenting the space between 

 the shoulders exerts an assuaging effect on various affections of the 

 respiratory organs ; and, if I had the care of a boy with an hereditary 

 disposition to a pulmonary disease, I should feel strongly tempted to 

 defy fashion, and let him wear his hair d la Guido about a foot 

 long. 



The canal-laborers of Sault Ste. Marie wear double hoods, and on 

 many days have to stuff them with wool to save their ears ; but, in the 

 more j^opulous part of America, such days are a rare exception, and 

 south of the lower lakes the average schoolboy will prefer to rough it 

 with a tippet shawl or a common cap with a pair of ear-flaps. In re- 

 gard to the utility of woolen underclothes, opinions are much divided : 

 Carl Bock recommends worsted jackets ; Dr. Coale flannel under- 

 shirts and drawers, with extra breast-pads in cold weather ; but the 

 hardy Scandinavians, Russians, and French Canadians, as well as the 

 great majority of our German population, still stick to coarse linen 

 next the skin, and use woolen pectorals only as counter-irritants in 

 rheumatic affections. Persons who can not bear woolen underclothes, 

 I would advise to try the Normandy plan of rufl[ied linen, which might 

 be applied even to hoisery and drawers. Chamois-leather, too, is as 

 warm as wool and less irritating to the skin, and has the advantage 

 of being more durable, and withal cleanlier, than the best flannel. 

 On stormy days, especially during the piercing northwest storms of 

 our prairie States, few children will object to a Scotch plaid, worn 

 like a burnoose, over head and shoulders, or a handful of wool stuffed 

 around the socks in a pair of wide brogans. 



But at the beginning of the warm season all such things ought to 

 be thrown aside. A loose shirt, linen jacket, and short linen trowsers 

 are the right summer dress for a healthy boy a dalmatica and light 

 straw hat for a healthy girl in a country where the six warmest 

 months approach the isotherms of southern Spain. No wadded coats, 

 no drawers, and, in the name of reason, no flannels, nor shoes and 

 stockings, unless the mud is very deep, or the road to school recently 

 macadamized. The long-lived races of Eastern Europe w^ould laugh 

 at the idea that the constitution of a normal human being could be 

 endangered by an April shower, or that in the dog-days "health 

 and decency" require a woolen cuticle from neck to foot. Have 

 dogmas and hearsays entirely closed our senses to the language of 

 instinct, to the meaning of the discomfort, the distracting uneasiness 

 under the burden of a load of calorific covers and bandages, while 

 every pore of our skin cries out for relief, for the cooling influence of 

 the free open air ? Keep your children under lock and key, lest the 

 sun should spoil their complexion or their morals, let them pass their 

 days in an underground dungeon like Kaspar Hauser, but do not load 



