It will give me great pleasure if I can in any way contribute to your so very interesting researches, and I shall be glad to know whether you have published anything on the subject you have questioned me on. I find vigorous exercise the first and most important stimulant to hard work. I get up in summer at six, in winter at seven, take an hour and a half's hard ride, afterwards a warm bath, a cold douche, and then breakfast. I work from ten to seven generally; but twice or thrice a week I have an additional exercise—an hour's fencing before dinner, which I take at 8 p.m. I take light claret or hock to my dinner, but never touch any wine or spirits at any other times, and eat meat only once in twenty-four hours. I find a small cup of coffee after luncheon very exhilarating. I smoke when hard at work—chiefly cigarettes. After a long sitting (as I do not smoke while working from nature), a cigarette is a soother for which I get a perfect craving. In the evening, or when I am in the country doing nothing, I scarcely smoke at all, and do not feel the want of it there; nor do I then take at evening dinner more than one or two glasses of wine, and I have observed that the same quantity which would make me feel giddy in the country when in full health and vigour, would not have the slightest effect on me when taken after a hard day's work. I also observed that I can work longer without fatigue when I have had my ride, than when for any reason I have to give it up. I have carried this mode of life on for nearly twenty years, and am well and feel young, though forty-eight. I never see any one from ten to three o'clock; after that I still work, but must often suffer interruption. I found that temperament and constitution are rarely, if ever, a legitimate excuse for departure from abstinence and sober habits. I have the conviction that in order to have the eye and the brain clear, you ought to make your skin act vigorously at least once in twenty-four hours.

J. E. BOEHM.
February 20, 1882.