PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 307 



and those that could be acclimatized in the course of five or six seasons. 

 With five kinds of cereals, three legumina, eight species of esculent 

 roots, ten or twelve nutritive herbs, thirty to forty varieties of tree- 

 fruits, besides berries and nuts, a vegetarian might emulate the Due 

 de Polignac, who refused to eat the same dish more than once per 

 season. Honey is the pure, unchanged, and unalloyed saccharine juice 

 of flowers and resinous exudations, and therefore strictly a vegetable 

 substance, though Carl Bock and Bichat describe it as semi-animal 

 food, because " derived from animals," i. e., hived by bees. They 

 might as well include flour under the same category because horses 

 carry grist to the mill. Like sugar, vanilla, and the manna-sirup of 

 Arabia Felix, we might class it with the non-stimulating condiments, 

 which, used in moderate quantities, impart an agreeable flavor to many 

 farinaceous preparations without impairing their digestibility. 



Of all semi-animal substances, sweet fresh milk is the most whole- 

 some, in itself an almost perfect aliment, welcome to all mammals and 

 nearly all vertebrate animals. Monkeys, cats, deer, squirrels, otters, 

 and ant-bears, creatures that differ so widely in their special diet, will 

 rarely refuse a dish of this universal food. I have seen snakes and 

 iguanas drink it with avidity. On the other hand, I have noticed that 

 all animals but pigs and starved dogs eschew sour milk ; it is, properly 

 speaking, fermented milk, to the taste of a normal man probably as 

 repulsive as tainted meat or sour gruel. This fermentation affects 

 the fatty particles less than the watery and caseine ; and butter and 

 cream (though less digestible than fresh milk) are, therefore, far 

 healthier than sour whey and cheese. Cheese in some of its forms is 

 quite as unwholesome as rotten flesh ; putrid curd would be the right 

 name for Limburger and fromage de Brix. Vegetarians of the Lan- 

 kester school object to milk and butter on account of the spurious stuff 

 that is often foisted upon the market under those names, but mild- 

 tasted aliments can hardly be adulterated with very injurious sub- 

 stances ; a little tallow, oleomargarine, or even lard, mixed with butter, 

 and as such again mixed with a tenfold quantity of farinaceous food, 

 can only affect the most delicate constitutions to any appreciable de- 

 gree, and certainly not more than the small percentage of alum we 

 often eat wdth our daily bread. Comparatively speaking, such things 

 are the veriest trifles, and we can not afford to fight gnats while we 

 are beset by a swarm of vampires. We have dietetic exquisites who 

 would shudder at the idea of raising their biscuits with brewer's yeast 

 instead of bicarbonate of soda, but do not hesitate to sandwich that 

 same bread with strong cheese and pork-sausage ; or pity the wretch 

 whose poverty consents to North Carolina apple-jack, while they sip a 

 petite verve of aromatic schiedam. That kind of purism often reminds 

 me of the fastidiousness of Heinrich Heine's Mandarin convict, who 

 insists on being thrashed with a perfumed bamboo, " but would have 

 been shocked at a less fragrant hiding." 



