SUGGESTIVE.
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aid of agricultural * or commercial interests, by the promise of large pecuniary rewards. What more legimate, or more desirable, than that the commonwealth should use every spur to bring to the lives and health of its inhabitants every device by which they may be additionally secured or promoted ? If it be advisable to offer large rewards to him who shall discover the prevention of rot in the potato (an article of food of comparatively small value, physiologically considered), and to bestow a prize of due proportion for “ the
* “ It is shown by the statistical tables of Continental Europe, that the annual human increase depends upon the agricultural product of it; and so well is this established, that, in countries where the army is made up by the conscription of a certain proportion of the population, it has been found, that not only the number to be had can, with a fair chance of accuracy, be estimated from tlxe state of the market eighteen to twenty years previously, but even the average standard height of the men furnished.” — Kkepp: The Sewage Question, p. 9.
If this be so, is it not a rational thing, that powers fully as depletory and devitalizing as scarcity of food, viz., the inimical forces against the health of woman, should have an equally untoward effect against the vigor and numbers of a nation ?