WHY BO WE EAT OUR DINNER? 799 



mens exhibited by M. Rames, whose discoveries are quite recent, is one 

 which, had it been found on the surface of the ground, would never 

 have been called in question. 



The weighty facts developed by French investigators received strik- 

 ing confirmation in the Portuguese department of the Exposition. A 

 distinguished savaiit of Lisbon, Senhor Ribeiro, director of the Geo- 

 logical Bureau of Portugal, sent a collection of flints and quartzites 

 found in the strata of the Middle Tertiary or Miocene and in the Upper 

 Tertiary or Pliocene of the valley of the Tagus. Among these speci- 

 mens — ninety-five in number — are twenty-two which bear unquestionable 

 traces of intentional chipping. Nine specimens, all of flint, are de- 

 scribed as coming from the Miocene. Of the others, purporting to be 

 Pliocene, seven are of flint and six of quartzite. All these specimens 

 are roughly chipped, and nearly all are triangular in form, and not re- 

 dressed, whether the material be flint or quartzite. 



Thus, then, the Anthropological Exposition, important though it 

 was from the point of view of quaternary man, is still more important 

 from the point of view of tertiary man— man's precursor. His existence 

 can no more be denied. 



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WHY DO WE EAT OUK DINKEE? 



By Peofessob GKANT ALLEN. 



EARLY last year a paragraph went the round of the papers to the 

 efi'ect that a large female anaconda-snake, in the reptile-house at 

 the Zoological Gardens, after a fast of a twelvemonth, had at length 

 been induced to kill and swallow a duck. This very touchy and vin- 

 dictive lady, it appears, had taken such grave offense at her capture in 

 her South American home, and at her subsequent compulsory voyage to 

 Great Britain, that she sulked persistently for a whole year, and inva- 

 riably refused the keeper's most tempting offers of live rabbits or plump 

 young pigeons. Month after month she lay passive in her cage, with 

 her heart beating, her lungs acting, and all her vital functions proceed- 

 ing with the usual slow regularity of snake-life ; but not a mouthful of 

 food did she attempt to take, and not a single fresh energy did she re- 

 cruit from without to keep up the working of her animal mechanism. 

 As I read this curious case of a genuine " fasting girl " in my " Times " 

 one morning, the thought struck me forcibly — " Why, after all, should 

 we expect her to feed ? Why should she not go on for ever without 

 tasting a morsel? In short, why should we eat our dinner?" And I 

 set myself to work at once to find out what was the general opinion of 

 the unscientific public upon this important though novel question. 



Singularly enough, I found that most people were content to eat 

 their dinner in a very unreasoning and empirical way. They had al- 



