HIGHLAND AND AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
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illustrated by the fact, that when cats or dogs are covered over with 
a varnish preventing cutaneous transpiration, they speedily die. In 
an impure air vitiated by exhalations from living beings, the process 
of respiration by both skin and lungs is carried on very imperfectly, 
sometimes, indeed, so much so, that life is destroyed, as is, unfor- 
tunately, too strikingly shown in the disaster of the Black Hole of 
Calcutta, the mortality of seventy persons on board the Irish 
steamer Londonderry, on 1st December, 1848, and many other 
cases. But even when not so great as to cause such disastrous 
consequences, the deficiency of fresh air is often adequate, slowly 
and insidiously, to produce a long catalogue of bad effects. It fre- 
quently induces a deteriorated and debilitated state of health, which 
becomes a fertile predisposing cause of many disorders, and inter- 
feres with the oxidation and removal of effete and poisonous matters 
which ought to be speedily excreted. In the human subject, it has 
long been known to increase materially the liability to epidemic 
disease, and this is illustrated by the high rates of mortality from 
cholera, typhus, and other such diseases among the inmates of many 
of our badly-regulated prisons and workhouses, among our troops 
while inhabiting certain barracks, and among the inhabitants of 
Iceland. Some curious facts bearing on this point have been re- 
corded by Mr. Maclean, regarding the Island of St. Kilda, one 
of the Western Hebrides. In 1838, he found that four out of every 
five infants born in that island, died before the twelfth day of their 
existence from trismus nascentium. “The great, if not the only 
cause of this mortality,” says Dr. Carpenter, “was the contamina- 
tion of the atmosphere by the filth, amidst. which the people lived. 
Their huts, like those of the Icelanders., were small, low-roofed, and 
without windows ; and were used, during winter, as stores for the 
collection of manure, which was carefully laid out on the floor, and 
trodden under foot, to the depth of several feet. On the other 
hand, the clergyman, who lived exactly as did those around him, 
except as to the condition of his house, had brought up a family of 
four children in perfect health ; whereas, according to the average 
mortality around him, at least three out of the four would have been 
dead within the first fortnight .”— [Principles of Human Physiology , 
p. 555.) Among horses a defective supply of air will produce, as in 
man, a state of body unusually prone to suffer from influenza, and all 
epizootic and zymotic diseases. In such unfavorable circumstances, 
influenza will be of a severe and untoward form, accompanied by 
an unusual amount of typhoid fever, and apt to assume a contagious 
type. To avoid this, and all other diseases as much as possible, 
and to disarm them of their virulence, stables should be made lofty 
in the roof, and otherwise large and commodious, wdth facilities for 
the exit of heated and vitiated air, and for the entrance of cool and 
pure air, and with large windows, capable of admitting light. Pro- 
vision should be made to allow each horse at least 4000 cubic 
feet of air, and this quantity will not be found too large, when 
it is recollected that the usual allowance for man is about 
800 cubic feet, and that from the greater weight of his body, 
