DIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. FROM THt LIBRARY i )}- BENJAMIN PARKE AVERY. Accessions No. BIOLOGY JLOMARY GIFT OF- MRS. A VERY, August, i8qb. jss No. 1 >' THE HISTOKY OP A MOUTHFUL OF BREAD: AND ITS EFFECT ON THE mjalium of HUn atttr BY JEAN MACfi. TRANSLATED PROM THE EIGHTH FRENCH EDITION, BY MRS. ALFRED GATTY. EDITIO1T, REPEIXTEb FEOSI THE ABOVE, CAREFULLY EEVISED AND COMPAEED WITn THB 8ETEN TEEXTII FEBNCH EDITION. ;NEW YORK: BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. 1868. LIBRARY G BY JEAN MACE. HOME FAIRY TALES (Contes du Petit-Chateau}. Translated by MARY L. BOOTH. With Engravings. i2mo, Cloth, $i 75. THE SERVANTS OF THE STOMACH. Reprinted from the London Trans- lation, Revised and Corrected. i2mo, Cloth, $i 75.- THE HISTORY OF A MOUTHFUL OF BREAD: and its Effect on the Organization of Men and Animals. Translated from the Eighth French Edition by Mrs. ALFRED GATTY. i2mo, Cloth, $i 75. THE HISTORY OF THE SENSES AND THOUGHT. Translated by MARY L. BOOTH. i2mo. (/ Press.) PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1866, BY J. S. KEDFIELD In the Clerk's office of the District Court of tho United States for the Southern District of New York. EXTRACTS FRO^f THE PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION. THE volume of which the following pages are a translation, nas been adopted by the University Commission at Paris among their prize looks, and has reached an eighth edition. Perhaps these facts speak sufficiently in its favor ; but as translator, and to some extent editor, I wish to add my testimony to the great charm" as well as merit of the little work. I sat down to it, I must own, with no special predilection in favor of the subject as a suitable one for young people ; but in the course of the labor have become a thorough 'convert to the author's views that such a study perhaps I ought to add, so pursued as he has enabled it to be is likely to prove a most useful and most desir- able one. The precise age at which the interest of a young mind can be turned towards this practical branch of natural history is an open question, and not worth disputing about. It may vary even in different individuals. The letters are addressed to a child in the original even to a little girl and most undoubt- edly, as the book stands, it is fit for any child's perusal who can find amusement in its pages : while to the rather older readers, of whom I trust there will be a great many, I will venture to say that the advantage they will gain in the subject having been so treated as to be brought within the comprehension and adapted to the tastes of a child, is pretty nearly incalculable. The quaint- ness and drollery of the illustrations with which difficult scien- tific facts are set forth will provoke many a smile, no doubt, and in some young people perhaps a tendency to feel themselves treated lalyishly ; but if in the course of the babyish treatment they find themselves almost unexpectedly becoming masters of an amount of valuable information on very difficult subjects, they will have nothing to complain of. Let such young readers (3) 4 PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION. refer to even a popular Encyclopaedia for an insight into any of the subjects of the twenty-eight chapters of this volume " The Heart," " The Lungs," " The Stomach," " Atmospheric Pressure," no matter which, and see how much they can understand of it without an amount of preliminary instruction which would re- quire half-a-year's study, and they will then thoroughly appre- ciate the quite marvellous ingenuity and beautiful skill with which M. Mace has brought the great leading anatomical and physical facts of life out of the depths of scientific learning, and made them literally comprehensible by a child. There is one point (independent of the scientific teaching) and that, happily, the only really important one, in which the Eng- lish translator has had no change to make or desire. The relig- ious teaching of the book is unexceptionable. There is no strained introduction of the subject, but there is throughout the volume an acknowledgment of the Great Creator of this mar- vellous work of the human frame, of the daily and hourly grati- tude we owe to Him, and of the utter impossibility of our trac- ing out half his wonders, even in the things nearest to our senses, and most constantly subject to observation. M. Mace" will help, and not hinder the humility with which the Christian natural- ist lifts one veil only to recognise another beyond. It will be satisfactory to any one who may be inclined to won- der how a lady can feel sure of having correctly translated the various scientific and anatomical statements contained in the volume, to know that the whole has been submitted to the care- ful revision of a medical friend, to whom I have reason to be very grateful for valuable explanations and corrections whenever they were necessary. In the same way the chapter on " Atmos- pheric Pressure," where, owing to the ditieience between French and English weights and measures, several alterations of illus- trations, etc., had to be made, has received similar kind offices from the hands of a competent mathematician. MARGARET GATTY. Ecclesfield, June, 1864. NOTE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. IN May '66, the seventeenth edition of this work was on sale in Paris. The date of Mrs. Gatty's preface, it will be observed, is June '64, and at that time, the eighth French edition only had been reached. That it should be a popular book and com- mand a large sale wherever it is known, will not surprise any one who reads it : the only remarkable circumstance about it is, that it should not have been republished here long ere this. Even this may probably be accounted for, on the supposition that the title under which the translation was published in Eng- land, was so unmeaning conveying not the slightest idea of the contents of the book that none of our publishers even ven- tured to hand it over to their " readers " to examine. The author's title, The History of a Mouthful of Bread, while falling far short of giving a clear notion of the entire scope of the work, is shockingly diluted and meaningless, when trans- lated The History of a Bit of Bread! To the translation of Mrs. Gatty, which is in the main an excellent one, for she has generally seized upon the idea of the author and rendered it with singular felicity, it may be very properly objected that she has taken some liberties with the text when there was any conflict of opinion between herself and her author, and has given her own ideas instead of his, which is, probably, what she refers to when she calls herself " to some ex- tent editor." The reader of this edition will, in all these cases, find the thought of the author and not that of his translator ; for the reason that a careful examination of the original has convinced the publisher that in every instance the author was to be pro- (5) 6 NOTE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. ferred to the translator, to say nothing of the right an author may have to be faithfully translated. Besides making these restorations, the copy from which this edition was printed has been carefully compared with the last edition of the author and a vast number of corrections made, and in its present shape it is respectfully submitted and dedi- cated to every one (whose name is legion, of course) who num- bers among his young friends a "my dear child" to present it to. CONTENTS LETTER PACK I. INTRODUCTION . . 9 MAN. II. THE HAND. . . .19 HI. THE TONGUE 26 IV. THE TEETH . . . 33 v. THE TEETH (continued) 41 vi. THE TEETH (continued) 49 VH. THE THROAT 57 VIH. THE STOMACH . 64 ix. THE STOMACH (continued) 73 X. THE INTESTINAL CANAL 80 XI. THE LIVER XH. THE CHYLE .97 XIH. THE HEART 104 XIV. THE ARTERIES ' 112 XV. THE NOURISHMENT OP THE ORGANS . . . 123 XVI. THE ORGANS 128 XVII. ARTERIAL AND VENOUS BLOOD . . . . 133 XVHI. ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE 139 XIX. THE ACTION OF THE LUNGS 151 XX. CARBON AND OXYGEN 166 XXI. COMBUSTION ' . . . 174 XXH. ANIMAL HEAT ........ 181 xxni. ACTION or THE BLOOD UPON THE ORGANS . 194 (7) 8 CONTENTS. XXIV. THE "WORK OP THE ORGANS 200 XXV. CARBONIC ACID 209 XXVI. ALIMENTS OF COMBUSTION 216 XXVII. ALIMENTS OF NUTRITION (continued) NITROGEN OR AZOTE 225 XXVIII. COMPOSITION OF THE BLOOD 234 ANIMALS. XXIX. CLASSIFICATION OF ANIMALS 247 XXY. MAMMALIA (Mammals) 256 xxxi. MAMMALIA. (Mammals) continued . . .266 XXXIL MAMMALIA continued 277 xxxm. MAMMALIA continued 286 xxxiv. AVES. (Birds) . ' 301 xxxv. REPTILIA. (ReptUes) 314 xxxvi. PISCES. (Fishes) . . . . . . . 331 \x XVIL INSECTA. (Insects) 345 xxx von. CRUSTACEA MOLLUSKA. (Crustaceans and Mol- toate,) 361 xxxix. VERMES ZOOPHYTA. ( Worm* and Zoophyte^ . 373 XL. THE NOURISHMENT OF PLANTS . . . .389 CONCLUSION . 396 THE HISTORY OF A MOUTHFUL OF BREAD. LETTER I. INTRODUCTION. I AM going to tell you, my dear child, something of the life and nature of men and animals, believing the information may be of use to you in after-life, besides being an amusement to you now. Of course, I shall have to explain to you a great many particulars which are generally considered very difficult to understand, and which are not always taught even to grown-up people. But if we work together, and between us succeed in getting them clearly into your head, it will be a great triumph to me, and you will find out that the science of learned men is more entertaining for little girls, as well as more comprehensible, than it is sometimes supposed to be. Moreover, you will be in advance of your years, as it were, and one day may be astonished to find that you had mastered in childhood, almost as a mere amusement, some of the first principles of anatomy, chemistry, and several other of the physical 1* (9) 10 INTRODUCTION. sciences, as well as having attained to some knowledge of natural history generally. I begin at once, then, with the History of a Mouthful of Bread, although I am aware you may be tempted to exclaim, that if I am going to talk only about that, I may save myself the trouble. You know all about it, you say, as well tfs I do, and need not surely be told how to chew a bit of bread-and-butter ! Well, but you must let me begin at the very beginning with you, and you have no notion what an incredible number of facts will be found to be connected with this chewing of a piece of bread. A big book might be written about them, were all the details to be entered into. First and foremost Have you ever asked yourself why people eat ? You laugh at such a ridiculous question. " Why do people eat ? Why, because there are bon- bons, and cakes, and gingerbread, and sweetmeats, and fruit, and all manner of things good to eat." Yery well, that is a very good reason, no doubt, and you may think that no other is wanted. If there. were nothing but soup in the world, indeed, the case would be different. There might be some excuse then for making the inquiry. Now, then, let us suppose for once that there is noth- ing in the world to eat but soup ; and it is true that there are plenty of poor little children for "whom there is nothing else, but who go on eating nevertheless, and with a very good appetite, too, I assure you, as their parents know but too well very often. Why do people eat, then, even when they have nothing to eat but soup? This is what I am going to tell you, if you do not already know. The other day, when your mamma said that your frock " had grown" too short, and that you could not go out INTRODUCTION. 11 visiting till we had given you another with longer sleeves and waist, what was the real cause of this neces- sity? What a droll question, you say, and you answer " Because I had grown, of course." To which I say " of course," too ; for undoubtedly it was you who had outgrown your frock. But then I must push the question further, and ask How had you grown? Now you are puzzled. Nobody had been to your bed and pulled out your arms or your legs as you lay asleep. Xobody had pieced a bit on at the elbow or the knee, as people slip in a new leaf to a table when there is going to be a larger party than usual at dinner. How was it, then, that the sleeves no longer came down to your wrists, or that the body only reached your knees ? Nothing grows larger without being added to, any more than anything gets smaller without having lost some- thing ; you may lay that down as a rule, once for all. If, therefore, nothing was added to you from without, something must have been added to you from within. Some sly goblin, as it were, must have been cramming into your frame whatever increase it has made in arms, legs, or anything else. And who, do you think, this sly goblin is ? Why, my dear, it is yourself! Ay ! Bethink you, now, of all the bread-and-butter, and bonbons, and gingerbread, and cakes, and sweet- meats, and even soup and plain food (the soup and plain food being the most useful of all) which you have been sending, day by day, for some time past, down what we used to call " the red lane," into the little gulf below. What do you think became of them when they got there ? Well, they set to work at once, without asking 12 INTBODUCTION. your leave, to transform themselves into something else ; and gliding cunningly into all the holes and corners of your body, became there, each as best he might, bones, flesh, blood, etc., etc. Touch yourself where you will, it is upon these things you lay your hand, though, of course, without recognizing them, for the transforma- tion is perfect and complete. And it is the same with everybody. Look at your little pink nails, which push out further and further every morning j examine the tips of your beautiful fair hair, which gets longer and longer by de- grees ; coming out from your head as grass springs up from the earth ; feel the firm corners of your second teeth, which are gradually succeeding those which came to you in infancy ; you have eaten all these things, and that no long time ago. Nor are you children the only creatures who are busy in this way. There is your kitten, for instance, who a few months ago was only a tiny bit of fur, but is now turning gradually into a grown-up cat. It is her daily food which is daily becoming a cat inside her her saucers of milk now, and very soon her mice, all serve to the same end. The large ox, too, of whom you are so much afraid, be- cause you cannot as yet be persuaded what a good-natured beast he really is, and how unlikely to do any harm to children who do none to him that large ox began life as a small calf, and it is the grass which he has been eating for some time past which has transformed him into the huge mass of flesh you now see, and which by- and-by will be eaten by man, to become man's flesh in the same manner. But, further, still : Even the forest trees, which grow so high and spread so wide, were at first no bigger than INTRODUCTION. 13 your little finger, and all the grandeur and size you now look upon, they have taken in by the process of eating. " What, do trees eat ?" you ask. Yerily, do they ; and they are, by no means, the least greedy of eaters, for they eat day and night without ceasing. Not, as you may suppose, that they crunch bonbons, or anything else as you do ; nor is the process with them precisely the same as with you. Yet you will be surprised hereafter, I assure you, to find how many points of resemblance exist between them and us in this matter. But we will speak further of this presently. Now, I think you must allow that there are few fairy- talcs more marvellous than this history of bread and meat turning into little boys and girls, milk and mice turning into cats, and grass into oxen ! And I call it a history, observe, because it is a transformation that never happens suddenly, but by degrees, as time goes on. Now, then, for the explanation. You have heard, I dare say, of those wonderful spinning-machines which take in at one end a mass of raw cotton, very like what you see in wadding, and give out at the other a roll of fine calico, all folded and packed up ready to be deliv- ered to the tradespeople. Well, you have within you, a machine even more ingenious than that, which re- ceives from you all the bread-and-butter and other sorts of food you choose to put into it, and returns it to you changed into the nails, hair, bones and flesh we have been talking about, and many other things besides ; for there are quantities of things in your body, all dif- ferent from each other, which you are manufacturing in this manner all day long, without knowing anything about it. And a very fortunate thing this is for you ; 14 INTRODUCTION. for I do not know what would become of you if you had to be thinking from morning to night of all that requires to be done in your body, as your mother has to look after and remember all that has to be done in the house. Just think what a relief it would be to her to possess a machine which should sweep the rooms, cook the dinners, wash the plates, mend torn clothes, and keep watch over everything without giving her any trouble ; and, moreover, make no more noise or fuss than yours does, which has been working away ever since you were born without your ever troubling your head about k, or probably even knowing, of its existence ! Just think of this and be thankful. But do not fancy you are the only possessor of a magical machine of this sort. Your kitten has one also, and the ox we were speaking of, and all other living creatures. And theirs render the same service to them that yours does to you, and much in the same way ; for all these machines are made after one model, though with certain variations adapted to the differences in each animal. And, as you will see by-and-by, these variations exactly correspond with the different sort of work that has to be done in each particular case. For instance, where the machine has grass to act upon, as in the ox, it is differently constructed from that in the cat, which has to deal with meat and mice. In the same way in our manufactories, though all the spinning-ma- chines are made upon one model, there is one particular arrangement for those which spin cotton, another for those which spin wool, another for flax, and so on. But, further : You have possibly noticed already, without being told, that all animals are not of equal value ; or, at least, to use a better expression, they have not all had INTRODUCTION. 15 the same advantages bestowed on them. The dog, for instance, that loving and intelligent companion, who almost reads your thoughts in your eyes, and is as affec- tionate and obedient to his master as it were to be wished all children were to their parents this dog is, as you must own, very superior, in all ways, to the frog, with its large goggle eyes and clammy body, hiding it- self in the water as soon as you come near it. But again, the frog, which can come and go as it likes, is decidedly superior to the oyster, which has neither head nor limbs, and lives all alone, glued into a shell, in a sort of per- petual imprisonment. Now the machine I have been telling you about is found in the oyster and in the frog as well as in the dog, only it is less complicated, and therefore less perfect in the oyster than in the frog ; and less perfect again in the frog than in the dog ; for as we descend in the scale of animals we find it becoming less and less elaborate losing here one of its parts, there another, but neverthe- less remaining still the same machine to all intents and purposes ; though by the time it has reached its lowest condition of structure we should hardly be able to recognize it again, if we had not watched it through all its gradations of form, and escorted it, as it were, from stage to stage. Let me make this clear to you by a comparison. You know the lamp which is lit every evening on the drawing-room table, and around which you all assemble to work or read. Take off first the shade, which throws the light on your book then the glass which prevents it smoking then the little chimney which holds the wick and drives the air into the flame to make it burn brightly. Then take away the screw, which sends the wick up and down ; vndo the pieces one by one, un- 16 INTK 3DUCTION. til none remain but those absolutely necessary to having a light at all namely, the receptacle for the oil and the floating wick which consumes it. Now if any one should come in and hear you say, " Look at my lamp," what would he reply ? He would most likely ask at once, " What lamp ?" for there would be very little resemblance to a lamp in that mere ghost of one before him. But to you, who have seen the different parts removed one after another, that wick soaked in oil (let your friend shake his head about it as he pleases) will still be the lamp to you, however divested of much that made it once so perfect, and however dimly it may shine in consequence. And this is exactly what happens when the machine we are discussing is examined in the different grades of animals. The ignoramus who has not followed it through its changes and reductions cannot recognize it when it is presented to him in its lowest condition ; but any one who has carefully observed it throughout, knows that it is, in point of fact, the same machine still. This, then, is what we are now going to look at to- gether, my dear little girl. We will study first, piece by piece, the exquisite machine within ourselves, which is of such unceasing use to us as long as we do not give it more than a proper share of work to perform. Do you understand ? We will see what becomes of the mouthful of bread which you place so coolly between your teeth, as if when that was done nothing further re- mained to be thought about. We will trace it in its passage through every part of the machine, from begin- ning to end. It will therefore be simply only the His- tory of a Mouthful of Bread I am telling you, even INTRODUCTION. 17 while I seem to be talking of other matters ; for to make that comprehensible I shall have to enter into a good many explanations. And when you have thoroughly got to understand the history of what you eat yourself, we will look a little into the history of what other animals eat, beginning by those most like ourselves, and going on to the rest in regular succession downwards. And while we are on the subject, I will say a word or two on the way in which vegetables eat, for, as you remember, I have stated that they do eat also. Do you think this is likely to interest you, and be worth the trouble of some thought and attention ? Perhaps you may tell me it sounds very tedious, and like making a great fuss about a trifle ; that you have all your life eaten mouthfuls of bread without troubling yourself as to what became of them, and yet? have not been stopped growing by your ignorance, any more than the little cat, who knows no more how it happens than you do. True, my dear ; but the cat is only a little cat, and you are a little girl. Up to the present moment you and she have known, one as much as the other on this sub- ject, and on that point you have therefore had no su- periority over her. But she will never trouble herself about it, and will always remain a little cat. You, on the contrary, are intended by God to become something more in intelligence than you are now, and it is by learning more than the cat that you will rise above her in this respect. To learn, is the duty of all men, not only for the pleasure of curiosity and the vanity of being called learned, but because in proportion to what we learn we approach nearer to the destiny which God has appointed to man, and when we walk obediently in 18 INTRODUCTION. the path which God himself has marked out for us, we necessarily become better. It is sometimes said to grown-up people, that it is never too late to learn. To children one may say that it is never too early to learn. And among the things which they may learn, those which I want now to teach you have the double merit of being, in the first place amusing, and afterwards, and above all, calculated to accustom you to think of God, by causing you to ob- serve the wonders which He has done. Sure am I that when you know them you will not fail to admire them ; moreover I promise your mother that you will be all the better, as well as wiser, for the study. FIRST PART. MAN. LETTER II. THE HAND. AT the foot of the mountains, from whence I write to you, my dear child, when we want to show the country to a stranger, we commence by making him climb one of the heights, whence he may take in at a glance the whole landscape below, all the woods and villages scattered over the plain, even up to the blue line of the Rhine, which stretches out to the distant horizon. After this he will easily find his way about. It is to the top of a mountain equally useful that I have just led you. It has cost you some trouble to climb with me. You have had to keep your eyes very wide open that you might see to the end of the road we had to go together. Now then, let us come down and view the country in detail. Then we shall go as if we were on wheels. And now let us begin at the beginning : Well, doubtless, as the 'subject is eating, you will ex- pect me to begin with the mouth. Wait" a moment ; there is something else first. But you are so accustomed to make use of it, that you have never given it a thought, I dare say. It is not enough merely that one should have a mouth ; we must be able to put what we want within it. What (19) 20 THE HAND. would you do at dinner, for instance, if you had no hands? The hand is then the first thing to be considered. I shall not give you a description of it ; you know what it is like. But what, perhaps, you do not know, because you have never thought about it, is, the reason why your hand is a more convenient, and consequently more perfect, instrument than a cat's paw, for instance, which yet answers a similar purpose, for it helps the cat to catch mice. Among your five fingers there is one which is called the thumb, which stands out on one side quite apart from the others. Look at it with respect ; it is to these two little bones, covered over with a little flesh, that man owes part of his physical superiority to other animals. It is one of his best servants, one of the noblest of God's gifts to him. Without the thumb three-fourths (at least) of human arts would yet have to be invented ; and to begin with, the art not only of carrying the contents of one's plate to one's mouth, but of filling the plate (a very important question in another way) would, but for the thumb, have had difficulties to surmount of which you can form no idea. Have you noticed that when you want to take hold of anything (a piece of bread, we will say, as we are on the subject of eating), have you noticed that it is always the thumb who puts himself forward, and that he is always on one side by himself, whilst the rest of the fingers are on the other ? If the thumb is not helping, nothing re- mains in your hand, and you don't know what to do witli it. Try, by way of experiment, to carry your spoon to your mouth without putting your thumb to it, and you will see what a long time it will take you to get through a poor little plateful of broth. The thumb is placed in THE HAND. 21 such a manner on your hand that it can face each of the other fingers one after another, or all together, as you please ; and by this we are enabled to grasp, as if with a pair of pincers, whatever object, whether large or small. Our hands owe their perfection of usefulness to this happy arrangement, which has been bestowed on no other animal, except the monkey, our nearest neighbor. I may even add, while we are about it, that it is this which distinguishes the hand from a paw or a foot. Our feet, which have other things to do than to pick up ap- ples or lay hold of a fork, our feet have also each five lingers, but the largest cannot face the others ; it is not a thumb, therefore, and it is because of this that our feet are not hands. Now the monkey has thumbs on the four members corresponding to our arms and legs, and thus we may say that he has hands at the end of his legs as well as of his arms. Nevertheless, he is not on that account better off than we are, but quite the contrary. I will explain this to you presently. To return to our subject. You see that it was neces- sary, before saying anything about the mouth, to con- sider the hand, which is the mouth's purveyor. Before the cook lights the fires the maid must go to market, must she not ? And it is a very valuable maid that we have here : what would become of us without her ? If we were in the habit of giving thought to every- thing, we should never even gather a nut without being grateful to the Providence which has provided us with the thumb, by means of which we are able to do it so easily. But however well I may have expressed it, I am by no means sure, after all, that I have succeeded in show- ing you" clearly, how absolutely necessary our hand is to us in eating, and why it has the honor to stand at the beginning of the history of what we eat. 22 THE HAND. It still appears to you, I suspect, that even if you were to lose the use of your hands you would not, for , all that, let yourself die of hunger. This is because you have not attended to another cir- cumstance, which nevertheless demands your notice namely, that from one end of the world to the other, quantities of hands are being employed in providing you with the wherewithal to eat. To go on further : Have you any idea how many hands have been put in motion merely to enable you to have your coffee and roll in the morning ? What a number, to be sure, over this cup of coffee (which is a trifle in comparison with the other food you will consume in the course of the day) ; from the hand of the negro who gathered the coffee crop to that of the cook who ground the berries, to say nothing of the hand of the sailor who guided the ship which bore them to our shores. Again, from the hand of the laborer who -sowed the corn, and that of the miller who ground it into flour, to the hand of the baker who made it into a roll. Then the hand of the farmer's wife who milked the cow, and the hand of the refiner who made the sugar ; to say nothing of the many others who prepared his work for him, and I know not how many more. How would it be, then, if I were to amuse myself by counting up all the hands that are wanted to furnish The sugar-refiner's manufactory, The milkmaid's shed, The baker's oven, The miller's mill, The laborer's plough. The sailor's ship ? And even now is there nothing we have forgotten ? Ah, yes ! the most important of all the hands to you ; THE HAXD. 23 the hand which brings together for your benefit the fruits of the labor of all the others the hand of your dear mother, always active, always ready, that hand which so often acts as yours when your own is awkward or idle. Now, then, you see how you might really manage to do without those two comparatively helpless little paws of yours (although there is a thumb to each), without suffering too much for want of food. With such an army of hands at work, in every way, to furnish provis- ion for that little mouth, there would not be much dan- ger. But cut off your cat's fore paws oh dear ! what am I saying ? Suppose, rather, that she has not got any, and then count how many mice she will catch in a day. The milk you give her is another matter, remember. Like your cup of coffee, that is provided for her by others. Believe me, if you were suddenly left all alone in a wood, like those pretty squirrels who nibble hazel-nuts so daintily, you would soon discover, from being thus thrown upon your own resources, that the mouth is not the only thing required for eating, and that whether it be a paw or a hand, there must always be a servant to go to market for Mr. Mouth, and to provide him with food. Happily, we are not driven to this extremity^ We take hokl of our coffee-biscuit between the thumb and forefinger, and behold it is on its road Open tlje mouth, and it is soon done ! But before we begin to chew, let us stop to consider a little. The mouth is the door at which everything enters. Now, to every well-kept door there is a doorkeeper, or porter. And what is the office of a well-instructed 24 THE HAND. porter ? Well, he asks the people that present them- selves, who they are, and what they have come for ; and if he does not like their appearance, he refuses them ad- mittance. "We too, then, to be complete, need a porter of this sort in our mouths, and I am happy to say we have one accordingly. I wonder whether you know him ? You look at me quite aghast ! Oh, ungrateful child, not to know your dearest friend ! As a punish- ment, I shall not tell you who he is to-day. I will give you till to-morrow to think about it. Meanwhile, as I have a little time left, I will say one word more about what we are going to look at together. It would hardly be worth while to tell you this pretty story which we have begun, if from time to time we were not to extract a moral from it. .And what is the moral of our history to-day ? It has more than one. In the first place it teaches you, if you never knew it before, that you are under great obligations to other people, indeed to almost everybody, and most of all perhaps to people whom you may be tempted to look down upon. This laborer, with his coarse smock-frock and heavy shoes, whom you are so ready to ridicule, is the very person who, with his rough hand, has been the means of procuring for you half the good things you eat. That workman, with turned-up sleeves, whose dirty black fingers you are afraid of touching, has very likely blackened and dirtied them in your service. You owe great respect to all these people, I assure you, for they all work for you. Do not, then, go and fancy yourself of great consequence among them you who are of no use in any way at present, who want everybody's help yourself, but as yet can help nobody. Not that I mean to reproach you by saying this. Your THE HAND. 25 turn has not come yet, and everybody began like you originally. But I do wish to impress upon you that you must prepare yourself to become some day useful to others, so that you may pay back the debts which you are now contracting. Every time you look at your little hand, remember that you have its education to accomplish, its debts of honor to repay, and that you must make haste and teach it to be very clever, so that it may no longer be said of you, that you are of no use to anybody. And then, my dear child, remember that a day will come, when the revered hands that now take care of your childhood those hands which to-day are yours, as it were will become weak and incapacitated by age. You will be strong, then, probably, and the assistance which you receive now, you must then render to her, render it to her as you have received it that is to say, with your hands. It is the mother's hand which comes and goes without ceasing about her little girl now. It is the daughter's hand which should come and go around the old mother hereafter her hand and not another's. Here again, my child, the mouth is nothing without the hand. The mouth says, " I love," the hand proves it. LETTER III. THE TONGUE. Now, about this doorkeeper, or porter, as we will call him, of the mouth. I do not suppose you have guessed who he is ; so I am going to tell you. The porter who keeps the door of the mouth is the sense of taste. It is he who does the honors of the house so agreeably to proper visitors, and gives such an unscrupulous dis- missal to unpleasant intruders. In other words, it is by his directions that we welcome so affectionately with tongue and lips whatever is good to eat, and spit out unhesitatingly whatever is unpleasant. I could speak very ill of this porter if I chose ; which would not be very pleasant for certain little gourmands that I see here, who think a good deal too much of him. But I would rather begin by praising him. I can make my exceptions afterwards. In the history I am going to give you, my dear child, there is one thing you must never lose sight of, even when I do not allude to it ; and that is, that everything we shall examine into, has been expressly arranged by God for the good and accommodation of our being in this world ; just as a cradle is arranged by a mother for the comfort of her baby. We must look upon all these things, therefore, as so many presents from the Almighty himself '; and abstain from speaking ill of them, were it only out of respect fov the hand which has bestowed them. (26) THE TONGUE. 27 Moreover, there is a very easy plan by which we may satisfy ourselves of the usefulness and propriety of these gifts namely, by considering what would become of us if we were deprived of any one of them. Suppose, for instance, that you were totally deficient in the sense of taste, and that when you put a piece of cake into your mouth, it should create no more sensa- tion in you than when you held it in your hand ? You would not have thought of imagining such a case yourself, I am aware ; for it never comes into a child's head to think that things can be otherwise than as God has made them. And in that respect chil- dren are sometimes wiser than philosophers. Neverthe- less, we will suppose this for once, and consider what would happen in consequence. Well, in the first place, you would eat old mouldy cake with just the same relish as if it were fresh ; and this mouldy cake, which now you carefully avoid because it is mouldy, is very unwholesome food, and would poison you were you to eat a great deal of it. I give this merely as an instance, but it is one of a thousand. And although, with regard to eatables, you only know such as have been prepared either in shops or in your mamma's kitchen, still you must be aware there are many we ought to avoid, because they would do no good in our stomachs, and that we should often be puzzled to distinguish these from others, if the sense of taste did not warn us about them. You must admit, therefore, that such warnings are not without their value. In short, it is a marvellous fact that what is unfit for food, is almost always to be recognized as it enters the mouth, by its disagreeable taste ; a further proof that God has thought of everything. Medicines, it is true, are unpleasant to the taste, and yet have to be swallowed 28 THE TONGUE. in certain cases. But we may compare them to chimney- sweepers, who are neither pretty to look at, nor invited into the drawing-room ; but who, nevertheless, are from time to time let into the grandest houses by the porters though possibly with a grimace because their services are wanted. And in the same way medicines have to be admitted sometimes despite their unpleasantness because they,too, have to work in the chimney. Taste does not deceive you about them, however; they are not intend- ed to serve as food. If any one should try to breakfast, dine, and sup upon physic he would soon find this out. Besides, I only said almost always, in speaking of unwholesome food making itself known to us by its nasty taste ; for it is an unfortunate truth that men have invented a thousand plans for baffling their natural guardian, and for bringing thieves secretly into the com- pany of honest people. They sometimes put poison, for instance, into sugar as is too often done in the case of those horrible green and blue sugar plums, against which I have an old grudge, for they poisoned a friend whom I loved dearly in my youth. Such things as these pass imprudently by the porter, who sees nothing of their real character Mr. Sugar concealing the rogues behind him. Moreover, we are sometimes so foolish as not to leave the porter time to make his examination. We swallow one thing after another greedily, without tasting ; and such a crowd of arrivals, coming in with a rush, " forces the sentry," as they say ; and whose fault is it, if, after this, we find thieves established in the house ? But animals have more sense than we have. Look at your kitten when you give her some tit-bit she is not acquainted with how cautiously and gently she puts out her nose, so as to give herself time for consid- eration. Then how delicately she touches the unknown THE TONGUE. 29 object with the tip of her tongue, once, twice, and per- haps three times. And when the tip of the tongue has thus gone forward several times to make observations (for this is the great post of observation for the cat's porter as well as for ours), she ventures to decide upon swallowing, but not before. If she has the least suspi- cion, no amount of coaxing makes any difference to her ; you may call " puss, puss," for ever ; all your tender in- vitations are useless, and she turns away. Very good ; here then is one -little animal, at least, who understands for what end she has received the sense of taste, and who makes a reasonable use of it. Very different from some children of my acquaintance, who heedlessly stuff into their mouths whatever comes into their hands, without even taking the trouble to taste it, and who would escape a good many stomach-aches, if nothing else, if they were as sensible as Pussy. This is the really useful side of the sense of taste ; but its agreeable side, which is sufficiently well known to you, is not to be despised either, even on the grounds of utility. You must know, between ourselves, that eating would be a very tiresome business if we did not taste what we are eating ; and I can well imagine what trouble mam- mas would have in persuading their children to come to dinner or tea, if it were only a question of working their little jaws, and nothing further. What struggles what tears ! And setting aside children, who are by no means always the most disobedient to the will of a good GOD, how few men would care to stop in the midst of their occupations, to go and grind their teeth one against an- other for half-an-hour, if there were not some pleasure attached to an exercise not naturally amusing in itself? Ay, ay, my dear child, were it not for the reward in 30 THE TONGUE. pleasure which is given to men when they eat, the human race, who as a whole do not live too well already, would live still worse. And it is necessary that we should be fed, and well fed too, if we would perform properly here below the mission which we have received from above. Yes, "reward" was the word I used. Now it seems absurd to you, perhaps, that it should be necessary to reward a man for eating a good dinner? Well, well, GOD has been more kind to him, then, than you would be. To every duty imposed by Him upon man, He has joined a pleasure as a reward for fulfilling it. How many things should I not have to say to you on this sub- ject, if you were older ? For the present, I will content myself with making a comparison. When a mother thinks her child is not reasonable enough to do, of her own accord, something which it is nevertheless important she should do, as learning to read, for instance, or to work with her needle,