1884.] 
On Sanitary Reform . yq 
The stiff, hard drawing of the old Egyptian, Assyrian, 
&c., can never be confounded with the more exaCt con- 
formity to the natural shapes of the Europeans, and most 
decidedly stamps this relative “ latent power ” of the 
respective races. And. here it is not entirely “ surroundings ” 
that have formed their ideas of beauty — -a principle one of 
your correspondents argued for in a former number. This 
might explain the very peculiar drawings of the Chinese or 
Japanese, but cannot be applied to the ancient world, unless 
we unfoundedly suppose that their forms— contours of limbs 
—were as harsh as designed, which is absurd, and would 
not have escaped the notice of the early European historian. 
The hideous sculptures of Indu gods can hardly be the work 
of an Aryan race. Nor is it an accidental turn of thought 
like the nepotism of Travancore, Cochin, &c. 
The human mind cannot conceive anything, as Mr. Cook, 
of Boston, has shown, and the “ why ?” of that question is 
only to be answered on the hereditary principle, our ances- 
tors not being able even to guess the confines of space and 
time : yet still there are moments when we fancy we have 
an idea, — but the world is in our brain. 
IV. ON SANITARY REFORM, 
By Rev. Samuel Barber. 
III. 
* N the case of children receiving elementary education 
the Government has demanded that a certain cubical 
space shall be assigned to each individual : this is a 
grand principle of sanitation now recognised and enforced 
by the Law. Inspection of lodging-houses is partly based 
on the same truth, viz., that oxygen is essential to human 
life. Let us hope that this scientific axiom may receive a 
still further recognition at the hands of legislators, and that 
the inspection may become still more comprehensive. Why 
should school-buildings and lodging-houses monopolise the 
attention of sanitary authorities when ordinary dwelling- 
houses are shamefully overcrowded and vilely ventilated ? 
