Genre:

Essay

Subjects:

Health, Pollution, Horticulture, Human Development, Descent

    Comments that 'Some physiologists have gone so far as to declare that a family living continually in London would not prolong itself beyond three generations', and that despite the 'ease with which money procures [...] the diminution of painful disease', a 'constant canopy of burnt air and carbon-loaded cloud and human exhalation, a mixture and a medium through which the sun itself can hardly shine brightly [...] cannot be sufficient for creatures whose lungs are planned to bring fresh air to deteriorated blood, in order that that blood may take in the freshness and let the foulness go' (350). Speculates ironically that 'in accordance with the development theory, the ancient Pigbones family of Waltham may have once enjoyed their forestal rights on all fours, and chiefly with a view to the consumption of beech-mast and acorns, until, rising into a grandmother capable of setting store by an ancient manuscript book, they have culminated into a learned and painstaking historian to whom the present writer is very much indebted' (354).