EFFECTS .OF STAYS. 319 



ent time, this order, at least in many parts of our coun 

 try, has lost, in a lamentable degree, and in some speci- 

 mens entirely, those marks by which its individuals once 

 claimed a prominent rank among mammiferous animals. 

 And if the use of stays, corsets, steel busks, and their 

 adjuvants, continue to inflict their marks on future gener- 

 ations, as they do on the present, the order bimana will 

 undoubtedly deserve to lose its place in the mammalia 

 class ; since there will issue an entire extinction of those 

 natural organs, which form the chief characteristic of 

 this class, and from which its name is derived. 



1029. The loss of membership among the mammalia, 

 it is true, is of little importance except to the naturalist ; 

 but to the patriot, and moralist, the extinction of these 

 prominent traits which once distinguished the gender of 

 our species, cannot but create feelings of commiseration, 

 and regret, since such a deformity not only involves a 

 violation of the laws of nature and morality; the first by 

 suppressing the growth of important parts of the animal 

 system, and the second by the hazard of health and life 

 as a consequence ; but it also inevitably leads to a dete- 

 rioration of the species, with respect to stature, form, and 

 constitution. 



1030. It is true that stays are no recent invention, 

 having been know r n to the nations of Europe, before our 

 fathers and mothers came to these shores ; and therefore 

 it perhaps may be objected that the consequences we 

 have attributed ta them, may with the same probability 

 have happened formerly as now. But the construction 

 of this article o dress, though called by the same name, 

 is materially different from what it formerly was, as any 

 one may convince herself by hunting up, and examining 

 those worn by her grandmother. These will be found 

 so constructed as not in the least to interfere with the 

 expansion of the upper half of the bust; while those of 

 the present day, it may be presumed from the forms 

 moulded into them, are so made as either to present a 

 barrier of whalebone, or steel, to an unequal expansion 



. of the parts which they encompass ; or if any such pro- 

 vision is allowed, it must be rather in the region of the 

 shoulder-blades, than in that of the anterior portion of 

 the bust. 



