TWO WAYS OF LOOKING AT THE SAME FACTS.

Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, Volume 2, Issue 68, 18 January 1879, Page 3

TWO WAYS OF LOOKING AT THE SAME FACTS.

All English scientific paper remarks as a curious physiological fact that although open air life is so favorable to health, yet ii lias tho apparent effect of stunting growth in eariy youth. While the children of well-to-do parents, carefully housed and tended, are taLer for their age than tho children of the poor, they are not so strong in after years. "The laborers' children, for instance, who play in the lonely country roads and fields all day, whose parents lock their cottage doors when leaving for work in tho morning, so that their offspring shall not gain

entrance and do miscMef, are almost invariably short, for their age. The children of working farmers exhibit tho same peculiarity. After sixteen or eighteen, after years of hesitation as it were, the lads shoot up, and become groat hulking broad fellows, possessed of immense strength. ll.•me it would seem that indoor life forces growth al the wrong period, and so injures." The inference is plausible, but is wide of tho mark. The children of the well to do

are tall not because they are kopt indoors, but because they are well fed and saved from severe exposure The children of thepoorare stunted not, by too much sun and air, but because they arc ill fed. Hive the first, class plenty of outdoor, play, with their proper diet, and they will be strong as well as tall ; give to the laborers'' children the food suitable to their years and no amount of sun and wind will stunt, them. On the contrary they will nut have to wait till age brings capacity to turn strong food to bone and muscle, and time to overcome the evil effects of hard times in early; but will grow from the first steadily and sturdily.