TRANSACTIONS 



OF 



THE HIGHLAND AND AGRICULTURAL 

 SOCIETY OF SCOTLAND. 



REPORT ON THE DIETARIES OF SCOTCH AGRICULTURAL 



LABOURERS. 



By Robert Hutchison of Carlowrie, Kirkliston. 



[Premium — Twenty Sovereigns. ] 



A careful investigation of popular dietetics forms a subject of 

 interesting research, from the accurate study of which much 

 practical good may be anticipated if it leads to the adoption of 

 any improvement ; and the present is certainly the time to make 

 such an inquiry, when the course of events arising out of the 

 recent prevalence of rinderpest, and consequent enhanced value 

 of butcher meat and other articles of daily food, threatens to re- 

 tard and impede, if not entirely to throw back for a time, the 

 spontaneous improvement of the dietaries of the rural population 

 of the country. 



The school of Liebig have, doubtless, done much good, but 

 their statistical basis seems too narrow, and they have, perhaps, 

 at so early a period of the inquiry, formulated the ingesta of 

 various dietaries too precisely and minutely, and hence the re- 

 sults of their theories have not obtained such practical and popu- 

 lar support and trial as the elaborate nature of their investigations 

 deserves, and which the general confidence theoretically placed 

 in their system appears to warrant. The difficulty, moreover, 

 of undertaking experiments, or of obtaining returns upon a 

 satisfactory scale, and with an equality of fairness in all points, 

 leaves the matter still vague, and as regards the agricultural 

 dietary in Scotland at least, susceptible of much further useful 

 investigation. For if the daily consumpt of nutritive food by 

 the Scotch peasant and his family can be proved to be in- 



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