why it is so, we may attribute to this cause the common practice of seeking, by the use of the stays, to sustain the figure. Before the introduction of cloth amongst them, the American Indians used the fine bark of the white birch-tree for the purpose of enveloping the body in it. Now they use narrow bands of calico, which being wound round and round the body, in imitation of the manner in which a bandage is applied by surgeons to a swollen limb, they in this way compress and sustain the abdomen. If it be asked why those poor mothers of the wild woodsmen have adopted this custom, it will be found in the want of Nature, which has spoken through their organization, and demanded support. And where this aid is not rendered, women become proverbially ugly in middle life, as is the case with many of the African and Asiatic races, whose breasts hang down to an inordinate length, and whose bodies become deformed and decrepit at forty, and in many cases at a much earlier period. This premature decay of the figure may, without doubt, be attributed to the neglect of suitable hygienic means, for in early life those females are in no way deformed.
Many travellers have spoken of the large and pendulous mammæ of the females of certain bar-
