292 WiSGOJSrSIW STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
physical and moral decrepitude. Prevention is barely possible with 
the means at our disposal; but once the operating causes have 
eventuated in disease, insanity and crime, no human instrument¬ 
ality can effect a cure. A sound mind can seldom be discovered 
unless associated with a healthy body. 
The major portion of the work to be accomplished must be de¬ 
volved upon individuals.* Culture, which means more than col¬ 
legiate training, and does not necessarily include erudition, should 
produce perfect humanity; well developed in mind, body and 
estate, capable of perpetuating the best qualities of the race; and, 
therefore, able to appreciate all the circumstances that favor its 
highest development. Governments can only assist what the in¬ 
dividual may directly accomplish. Associations, however wisely 
directed, must depend for their ultimate success upon the intel¬ 
ligence of the mass to which their representations must be addres¬ 
sed; and for the amelioration of which their organizatioES are 
intended. The hope of society rests on the growth of personal 
enlightenment. 
EARLIER TRACES OF VENTILATION. 
Five thousand years ago, when the plans for the pyramid of 
Cheops may have been in preparation, there was more knowledge 
among the learned, as to ventilation, than we find to have been in 
existence among Anglo-Saxons a century since. The great pyra¬ 
mid had an arrangement for the ventilation of its interior chambers. 
The information implied by that provision, contrasts with singular 
force, when we consider that one hundred years ago in Plymouth 
Sound, within sight of two marvels of engineering work, the break¬ 
water and Eddystone lighthouse, a man was permitted to sink him¬ 
self in a strong box, in fulfilment of foolish wagers, because the 
scientific men of the time and the governing classes were alike 
ignorant as to the necessity for fresh air to maintain life. The death 
of that man remained an unsolved problem for many years. Egypt 
had no darkness to parallel such ignorance. Little more than a 
century earlier, the president of the college of physicians, in Lon¬ 
don, in an inaugural address, informed his fellow physicians, that 
no one knew, nor ever could know what purpose was served by the 
phenomena of breathing. Samuel Pepys records the fact, in his 
visit to Gresham College, in these words: “What among other fine 
discourse pleased me most was Sir George Ent about respiration; 
