i8z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



their neighboring race, the Ambuelos, from whom they obtain food for 

 ivory. He describes them as a nomadic people, never sleeping two 

 nights in the same encampment ; that they wander about in groups of 

 from four to six families, over all the territory that lies between the 

 Cuchi and the Cubango, and that they are the only people in Africa 

 that do not cook their food, eating it raw. He makes the interesting 

 statement, that it is the crossing of this people with the negroes that 

 has produced, in his opinion, the race of mulattoes so well known in 

 the lower part of South Africa by the name of Bushmen ; a race who 

 differ from those from which they have sprung, as they cook their food, 

 and are of a good disposition, though quite opposed to civilization. He 

 states that fevers prevail all along the river-banks of the Zambesi, and 

 in the lands adjoining the river, but that the country extending in- 

 land from the highlands of Benguela is the most suitable territory in 

 all tropical Africa for colonization, being five thousand feet above the 

 sea, fertile, well watered, and healthy. The people, he says, are docile, 

 capable of improvement, are very fond of dress, and that a market 

 would here be found for the consumption of foreign manufactures. 



DEESS IN KELATION TO HEALTH.* 



By BENJAMIN WAED EICHAKDSON. 



npHE character of the dress of a person stands so near to the char- 

 -L acter of the person who is the wearer of it that it is difficult to 

 touch on one without introducing the other. All sorts of sympathies 

 are evoked by dress. Political sympathies are in the most intimate of 

 relationships Avith dress ; social sympathies are indexed by it ; artistic 

 sympathies are of necessity a part of it. In a word, the dress is the 

 outward and visible skin of the creature that carries it. 



A charming and at the same time a very useful lecture might be 

 written on the metaphysics of dress ; but in this practical day, when 

 the useful only is tolerated and the charming is considered superfluous 

 I mean, of course, in a lecture I must let all attempt at such a com- 

 bination fall to the ground. I must deal only with what is purely phys- 

 ical ; the physical body and the physical stuff that is put on it dress 

 in relation to health. 



In studying this subject I will consider the following topics : 



Dress in relation to its mechanical adaptation to the body. 



Dress in relation to season. I mean the amount of clothing; that 

 should be worn at different periods of the year according to 

 seasonal changes, in this English climate. 



* Lecture delivered at the London Institution on Monday, March 1, 1880. 



