478 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



unaffectedly like sweets ; adults, who have grown more accustomed 

 to the artificial meat diet, don't, as a rule, care much for puddings, 

 cakes, and made dishes. (May I venture parenthetically to add, any 

 appearance to the contrary notwithstanding, that I am not a vegeta- 

 rian, and that I am far from desiring to bring down upon my devoted 

 head the imprecation pronounced against the rash person who would 

 rob a poor man of his beer. It is quite possible to believe that 

 vegetarianism was the starting-point of the race, without wishing 

 to consider it also as the goal ; just as it is quite possible to regard 

 clothes as purely artificial products of civilization, without desiring 

 personally to return to the charming simplicity of the garden of 

 Eden.) 



Bitter things in nature at large, on the contrary, are almost invari- 

 ably poisonous. Strychnia, for example, is intensely bitter, and it is 

 well known that life can not be supported on strychnia alone for more 

 than a few hours. Again, colocynth and aloes are far from being 

 wholesome food-stuffs, for a continuance ; and the bitter end of cu- 

 cumber does not conduce to the highest standard of good living. The 

 bitter matter in decaying apples is highly injurious when swallowed, 

 which it isn't likely to be by anybody who ever tastes it. Wormwood 

 and walnut-shells contain other bitter and poisonous principles ; ab- 

 sinthe, which is made from one of them, is a favorite slow poison with 

 the fashionable young men of Paris, who wish to escape prematurely 

 from " le monde oil Von s'ennuie.''^ But prussic acid is the common- 

 est component in all natural bitters, being found in bitter-almonds, 

 apple-pippins, the kernels of mango-stones, and many other seeds and 

 fruits. Indeed, one may say roughly that the object of Nature gener- 

 ally is to prevent the actual seeds of edible fruits from being eaten and 

 digested ; and for this purpose, while she stores the pulp with sweet 

 juices, she incloses the seed itself in hard, stony coverings, and makes 

 it nasty with bitter essences. Eat an orange-pip, and you will prompt- 

 ly observe how effectual is this arrangement. As a rule, the outer rind 

 of nuts is bitter, and the inner kernel of edible fruits. The tongue 

 thus warns us immediately against bitter things, as being poisonous, 

 and prevents us, automatically, from swallowing them. 



" But how is it," asks our objector again, " that so many poisons 

 are tasteless, or even, like sugar of lead, pleasant to the palate ? " The 

 answer is (you see, we knock him down again, as usual) because these 

 poisons are themselves for the most part artificial products ; they do 

 not occur in a state of nature, at least in man's ordinary surroundings. 

 Almost every poisonous thing that we are really liable to meet with in 

 the wild state we are warned against at once by the sense of taste ; 

 but of course it would be absurd to suppose that natural selection 

 could have produced a mode of warning us against poisons which 

 have never before occurred in human experience. One might just as 

 well expect that it should have rendered us dynamite-proof, or have 



