326 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



it is unnecessary to say, of a choice, and some of it in a concentrated 

 form. To call a person thus fed a vegetarian is a palpable error ; to 

 proclaim one's self so almost requires a stronger term to denote the 

 departure from accuracy involved. Yet so attractive to some, possess- 

 ing a moral sense not too punctilious, is the small distinction attained 

 by becoming sectarian, and partisans of a quasi-novel and somewhat 

 questioned doctrine, that an equivocal position is accepted in order to 

 retain if possible the term " vegetarian " as the ensign of a party, the 

 members of which consume abundantly strong animal food, abjuring 

 it only in its grosser forms of flesh and fish. And hence it happens, 

 as I have lately learned, that milk, butter, eggs, and cheese are now 

 designated in the language of " vegetarianism " by the term " animal 

 products," an ingenious but evasive expedient to avoid the necessity 

 for speaking of them as animal food ! 



Let us, for one moment only, regard milk, with which, on Nature's 

 plan, we have all been fed for the first year, or thereabout, of our 

 lives, and during which term we made a larger growth and a more 

 important development than in any other year among the whole tale 

 of the life which has passed, however long it may have been. How, 

 in any sense, can that year of plenty and expansion, which we may 

 have been happy and fortunate enough to owe an inextinguishable 

 debt to maternal love and bounty, be said to be a year of "vegeta- 

 rian diet " ! Will any man henceforward dare thus to distinguish the 

 source from which he drew his early life ? Unhappily, indeed, for 

 want of wisdom, the natural ration of some infants is occasionally 

 supplemented at an early period by the addition of vegetable matter ; 

 but the practice is almost always undesirable, and is generally paid 

 for by a sad and premature experience of indigestion to the helpless 

 baby. Poor baby ! who, unlike its progenitors in similar circumstances, 

 while forced to pay the penalty, has not even had the satisfaction of 

 enjoying a delightful but naughty dish beforehand. 



The vegetarian restaurant at the Health Exhibition last summer 

 supplied thousands of excellent and nutritious meals at a cheap rate, 

 to the great advantage of its customers ; but the practice of insist- 

 ing with emphasis that a "vegetable diet" was supplied was wholly 

 indefensible, since it contained eggs and milk, butter and cheese in 

 great abundance. 



It is not more than six months since I observed in a well-known 

 weekly journal a list of some half-dozen receipts for dishes recom- 

 mended on authority as specimens of vegetarian diet. All were savory 

 combinations, and every one contained eggs, butter, milk, and cheese 

 in considerable quantity, the vegetable elements being in comparatively 

 small proportion ! 



It is incumbent on the supporters of this system of mixed diet to 

 find a term which conveys the truth, that truth being that they abjure 

 the use, as food, of all animal flesh. The words " vegetable " and 



