230 STUDIES OF NATURE. 



verfal remedy. Liften to her aphorifms. Plants 

 are ufeful to human life : hence fhe concludes, 

 that a vegetable diet will make a man live for 

 feveral ages. Who is able to enumerate the 

 books, the treatifcs, the panegyrics, which have 

 been compofed on the virtues of plants ! Multi- 

 tudes of patients die, notwithftanding, with their 

 ftomachs full of thofe wonderful fmiples. Not 

 that I undervalue their qualities when judicioufly 

 applied ; but I abfolutely rejeâ; the reafonings 

 which attempt to conned the duration of human 

 life with the ufe of a vegetablç regimen. 



« 



The life of Man is the refult of all the moral 

 adaptations, and depends much more on fobriety, 

 on temperance, and the other virtues, than on the 

 nature of aliments. The animals which live en- 

 tirely on plants, do they attain even fo much as 

 the age of Man ? The deer and wild goats, which 

 feed on the admirable vulnerary herbs of Switzer- 

 land ought never to die ; neverthelefs, they are 

 very fliort-lived. The bees which fuck the neftar 

 of their flowers, likewife die, and feveral of their 

 fpecies, in the fpace of one year. There is a li- 

 mited term fixed for the life of every kind of ani- 

 mal, and a regimen peculiar to itj that of Man 

 alone extends to every variety of aliment. The 

 Tartar lives on raw horfe-flefli, the Dutchman on 

 fifli, another nation on roots, another on milk 



diet J 



