FOODS. 291 
the rare meats, sprinkled ashes thereupon, saying as he did it, 
“* Brother ash is good.”’ Nevertheless, nourishing and abundant 
food is essential for invalids whose nervous system has failed under 
some prolonged taxation of its endurance, so that impairment 
of the brain’s functions, or painful neuralgia, or sleeplessness 
has supervened, especially through excess of literary work. 
“Tales versus facio quale vinum bibo, 
Nihil possum scribere nisi sumpto cibo, 
Nihil valet penitus quod jejunus scribo, 
Nasonem post calices carmine preeibo.”” 
Confession of Golias (12th century). 
Wm. Hazlitt tells in his Conversation of Authors (1801): 
“There was Lamb himself, the most delightful, the most 
provoking, the most witty, and sensible of men. He always 
made the best pun, and the best remark in the course of the 
evening at a meal. No one ever stammered out such fine, 
' piquant, deep, eloquent things in half-a-dozen sentences as he. 
How often did we cut into the haunch of letters while we discussed 
the haunch of mutton on the table! How we skimmed the 
cream of criticism! How we got into the heart of astronomy ! 
How we picked out the marrow of authors! On one occasion 
he was for making out a list of persons famous in history whom 
one would wish to see again in the flesh, at the head of whom 
were Pontius Pilate, Sir Thomas Browne, and Doctor Faustus. 
With what a gusto would he describe his favourite authors, 
Donne, and Sir Philip Sidney, calling their most crabbed pages 
delicious! He tried them on his palate as epicures taste olives, 
and his observations had a smack in them like roughness on the 
tongue. To finish this subject, Mrs. Montagu’s conversation 
is as fine-cut as her features, and I like to sit in the room with 
that sort of coronet face; what she says leaves a flavour like 
her green tea. Hunt’s is like Champagne, and Northcote’s 
like Anchovy sandwiches; Lamb’s like Snap-dragon; and my 
own (if I do not mistake the matter) is not very much unlike 
& game at nine-pins.” : 
It is quite possible that much of the world’s food-supply will 
be furnished on some future day, not far off, by electricity. 
Already we know that when powerful electrical discharges occur 
in air, nitric acid is produced, which, when combined presently 
with soda, potash, or lime in the soil, produces the nitrates so 
indispensable for plant life. And it is asserted that by simply 
